IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctc/serie4/ieil0058.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labour Market Assimilation and Over Education: The Case of Immigrant Workers in Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Carlo Dell'Aringa

    (DISCE, Università Cattolica)

  • Laura Pagani

    (Università Milano Bicocca)

Abstract

In this paper we study the assimilation of immigrants into the Italian labour market using over-education as an indicator of labour market performance. The main objective is to assess the extent to which work experience in the host country’s labour market favours the international transferability of immigrants’ human capital. Using data from the Istat Labour Force Survey for the years 2005-2007, we find that foreigners are much more likely to be over-educated than natives upon their arrival in Italy and that work experience gained in the country of origin is not valued in the Italian labour market. Moreover, we find that not even experience acquired in Italy is helpful in improving immigrants’ educational job matches, suggesting that catch-up by foreigners seems unachievable, even after they adapt their skills to the host country labour market.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlo Dell'Aringa & Laura Pagani, 2010. "Labour Market Assimilation and Over Education: The Case of Immigrant Workers in Italy," DISCE - Quaderni dell'Istituto di Economia dell'Impresa e del Lavoro ieil0058, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
  • Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie4:ieil0058
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.unicatt.it/Istituti/EconomiaImpresaLavoro/Quaderni/ieil0058.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2010
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jacques Poot & Steven Stillman, 2010. "The importance of heterogeneity when examining immigrant education-occupation mismatch: evidence from New Zealand," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 1023, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
    2. Sholeh A. Maani & Le Wen, 2021. "Over-education and immigrant earnings: a penalized quantile panel regression analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(24), pages 2771-2790, May.
    3. Gabriella Berloffa & Francesca Paolini, 2019. "Decomposing Immigrant Differences in Physical and Mental Health: A 'Beyond the Mean' Analysis," DEM Working Papers 2019/4, Department of Economics and Management.
    4. Schwientek, Caroline, 2016. "Are immigrants overeducated in Germany? Determinants and wage effects of educational mismatch," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 07/2016, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    5. Jacobs, Valentine & Mahy, Benoît & Rycx, François & Volral, Mélanie, 2019. "The Heterogeneous Effects of Workers' Countries of Birth on Over-Education," IZA Discussion Papers 12705, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Rama Dasi Mariani & Alessandra Pasquini & Furio Camillo Rosati, 2023. "The Immigration Puzzle in Italy: A Survey of Evidence and Facts," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 9(1), pages 85-116, March.
    7. Sandra Nieto & Alessia Matano & Raul Ramos, 2013. "“Skill mismatches in the EU: Immigrants vs. natives”," AQR Working Papers 201310, University of Barcelona, Regional Quantitative Analysis Group, revised Oct 2013.
    8. Gabriella Berloffa & Francesca Paolini, 2022. "Going "beyond the mean" in analysing immigrant health disparities," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 47(7), pages 161-198.
    9. Strom, Steinar & Venturini, Alessandra & Villosio, Claudia, 2013. "Wage Assimilation: Migrants versus Natives and Foreign Migrants versus Internal Migrants," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201341, University of Turin.
    10. Barone, Guglielmo & D'Ignazio, Alessio & de Blasio, Guido & Naticchioni, Paolo, 2016. "Mr. Rossi, Mr. Hu and politics. The role of immigration in shaping natives' voting behavior," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 1-13.
    11. Barone, Guglielmo & D'Ignazio, Alessio & de Blasio, Guido & Naticchioni, Paolo, 2014. "Mr. Rossi, Mr. Hu and Politics: The Role of Immigration in Shaping Natives' Political Preferences," IZA Discussion Papers 8228, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Mariani, Rama Dasi & Pasquini, Alessandra & Rosati, Furio C., 2020. "Elementary Facts about Immigration in Italy: What Do We Know about Immigration and Its Impact?," IZA Discussion Papers 13181, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Alessandra Venturini & Daniela del Boca, 2014. "Migration in Italy is Backing the Old Age Welfare," Discussion Papers 25, Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI).
    14. Barbara Ermini & Luca Papi & Francesca Scaturro, 2017. "An Analysis of the Determinants of Over-Education Among Italian Ph.D Graduates," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 3(2), pages 167-207, July.
    15. Elisa Barbiano di Belgiojoso & Livia Elisa Ortensi, 2013. "Should I stay or should I go? The case of Italy," RIEDS - Rivista Italiana di Economia, Demografia e Statistica - The Italian Journal of Economic, Demographic and Statistical Studies, SIEDS Societa' Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica, vol. 67(3-4), pages 31-38, July-Dece.
    16. Barone, Guglielmo & D'Ignazio, Alessio & de Blasio, Guido & Naticchioni, Paolo, 2016. "Mr. Rossi, Mr. Hu and politics. The role of immigration in shaping natives' voting behavior," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 1-13.
    17. Barbara Ermini & Luca Papi & Francesca Scaturro, 2016. "Over-education among italian Ph.D. graduates. Does the crisis make a difference?," Mo.Fi.R. Working Papers 126, Money and Finance Research group (Mo.Fi.R.) - Univ. Politecnica Marche - Dept. Economic and Social Sciences.
    18. Marchetti, Sabrina & Piazzalunga, Daniela & Venturini, Alessandra, 2013. "Costs and Benefits of Labour Mobility between the EU and the Eastern Partnership Countries Country Study: Italy," IZA Discussion Papers 7635, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Sabrina Marchetti & Daniela Piazzalunga & Alessandra Venturini, 2014. "Does Italy represent an opportunity for temporary migrants from the eastern partnership countries?," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-20, December.
    20. Jacques Poot & Steven Stillman, 2016. "Skill composition of immigration flows and the measurement of education-occupation mismatch," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-28, December.
    21. Esteve Sanromá & Raúl Ramos & Hipólito Simón, 2015. "Portability of Human Capital and Immigrant Overeducation in Spain," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 34(2), pages 223-241, April.
    22. Ulceluse, Magdalena, 2018. "Self-employment as a stepping stone to better labour market matching: a comparison between immigrants and natives," GLO Discussion Paper Series 219, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    23. Julia Beckhusen & Raymond J.G.M. Florax & Jacques Poot & Brigitte S. Waldorf, 2013. "Attracting Global Talent And Then What? Overeducated Immigrants In The United States," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(5), pages 834-854, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Assimilation; Over education;

    JEL classification:

    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ctc:serie4:ieil0058. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lorenzo Cappellari (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dscatit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.