IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp3489.html

Do Migrants Get Good Jobs in Australia? The Role of Ethnic Networks in Job Search

Author

Listed:
  • Mahuteau, Stephane

    (University of Adelaide)

  • Junankar, Pramod N. (Raja)

    (University of New South Wales)

Abstract

We study the role of ethnic networks in migrants’ job search and the quality of jobs they find in the first years of settlement. We find that there are initial downward movements along the occupational ladder, followed by improvements. As a result of restrictions in welfare eligibility since 1997, we study whether this increases the probability that new migrants accept “bad jobs” quickly and then move onto better jobs over time. Holding employability constant, our results support this view. However, accounting for their higher employability, new migrants seem to fare better up to a year and half after settlement.

Suggested Citation

  • Mahuteau, Stephane & Junankar, Pramod N. (Raja), 2008. "Do Migrants Get Good Jobs in Australia? The Role of Ethnic Networks in Job Search," IZA Discussion Papers 3489, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3489
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp3489.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stark, Oded & Wang, You Qiang, 2002. "Migration dynamics," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 159-164, July.
    2. Deborah A. Cobb-Clark, 2003. "Public policy and the labor market adjustment of new immigrants to Australia," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 16(4), pages 655-681, November.
    3. Bauer, Thomas K. & Zimmermann, Klaus F., 1999. "Occupational Mobility of Ethnic Migrants," IZA Discussion Papers 58, IZA Network @ LISER.
    4. William Fellner, 1979. "Contemporary Economic Problems, 1979," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 918293, September.
    5. Chiswick, Barry R. & Lee, Yew Liang & Miller, Paul W., 2002. "Longitudinal Analysis of Immigrant Occupational Mobility: A Test of the Immigrant Assimilation Hypothesis," IZA Discussion Papers 452, IZA Network @ LISER.
    6. Linda Datcher Loury, 2004. "Some Job Contacts are More Equal Than Others: Earnings and Job Information Networks," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0404, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    7. P.N. (Raja) Junankar & Stéphane Mahuteau, 2005. "Do Migrants Get Good Jobs? New Migrant Settlement in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 81(s1), pages 34-46, August.
    8. Montgomery, James D, 1991. "Social Networks and Labor-Market Outcomes: Toward an Economic Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1407-1418, December.
    9. Linda Datcher Loury, 2006. "Some Contacts Are More Equal than Others: Informal Networks, Job Tenure, and Wages," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(2), pages 299-318, April.
    10. Deborah A. Cobb‐Clark, 2000. "Do Selection Criteria Make a Difference?: Visa Category and the Labour Market Status of Immigrants to Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 76(232), pages 15-31, March.
    11. Kaivan Munshi, 2003. "Networks in the Modern Economy: Mexican Migrants in the U. S. Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(2), pages 549-599.
    12. Chiswick, Barry R. & Lee, Yew Liang & Miller, Paul W., 2002. "The Determinants of the Geographic Concentration among Immigrants: Application to Australia," IZA Discussion Papers 462, IZA Network @ LISER.
    13. Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano & Giovanni Peri, 2021. "The economic value of cultural diversity: evidence from US cities," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Firms and Workers in a Globalized World Larger Markets, Tougher Competition, chapter 7, pages 187-222, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    14. Yannis M. Ioannides & Linda Datcher Loury, 2004. "Job Information Networks, Neighborhood Effects, and Inequality," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1056-1093, December.
    15. Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Siew-Ean Khoo (ed.), 2006. "Public Policy and Immigrant Settlement," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3734, June.
    16. Tanabe, Sakiko & Yamauchi, Futoshi, 2003. "Nonmarket networks among migrants," FCND briefs 169, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    17. Simon, Curtis J & Warner, John T, 1992. "Matchmaker, Matchmaker: The Effect of Old Boy Networks on Job Match Quality, Earnings, and Tenure," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(3), pages 306-330, July.
    18. Prem Jung Thapa & Tue Gørgens, 2006. "Finding Employment After Migration: How Long Does It Take?," Chapters, in: Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Siew-Ean Khoo (ed.), Public Policy and Immigrant Settlement, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Harriet Orcutt Duleep & Mark C. Regets, 1996. "Earnings Convergence: Does It Matter Where Immigrants Come From or Why?," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 29(s1), pages 130-134, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mahuteau, Stephane & Junankar, Pramod, 2007. "Do Migrants succeed in the Australian Labour Market? Furher Evidence on Job Quality," MPRA Paper 8703, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Mar 2008.
    2. Araujo, Luis & Minetti, Raoul, 2011. "Knowledge sharing and the dynamics of social capital," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(8), pages 1109-1119.
    3. Lena Hensvik & Oskar Nordström Skans, 2016. "Social Networks, Employee Selection, and Labor Market Outcomes," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(4), pages 825-867.
    4. Cappellari, Lorenzo & Tatsiramos, Konstantinos, 2015. "With a little help from my friends? Quality of social networks, job finding and job match quality," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 55-75.
    5. Perihan Ozge Saygin & Andrea Weber & Michèle A. Weynandt, 2021. "Coworkers, Networks, and Job-Search Outcomes among Displaced Workers," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 74(1), pages 95-130, January.
    6. Glitz, Albrecht, 2017. "Coworker networks in the labour market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 218-230.
    7. Federico Cingano & Alfonso Rosolia, 2012. "People I Know: Job Search and Social Networks," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(2), pages 291-332.
    8. Xin, Guangyi, 2017. "Social Interaction and Labour Market Outcomes," MPRA Paper 80976, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Matloob Piracha & Massimiliano Tani & Florin Vadean, 2012. "Immigrant over- and under-education: the role of home country labour market experience," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-21, December.
    10. Gyetvai, Attila & Zhu, Maria, 2025. "Coworker networks and the role of occupations in job finding," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    11. Judith K. Hellerstein & Melissa McInerney & David Neumark, 2011. "Neighbors and Coworkers: The Importance of Residential Labor Market Networks," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(4), pages 659-695.
    12. Dariel, Aurelie & Riedl, Arno & Siegenthaler, Simon, 2021. "Referral hiring and wage formation in a market with adverse selection," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 109-130.
    13. Tommaso Colussi, 2013. "Migrant Networks and Job Search Outcomes: Evidence from Displaced Workers," Working Papers 706, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    14. Arimoto, Yutaka & Machikita, Tomohiro & Tsubota, Kenmei, 2018. "Broker versus social networks in adverse working conditions: cross-sectional evidence from Cambodian migrants in Thailand," IDE Discussion Papers 686, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    15. Linda Datcher Loury, 2004. "Job Tenure and Personal Contacts: Good Matches or Limited Choices?," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0417, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    16. Semih Tumen, 2016. "Informal versus formal search: Which yields better pay?," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 12(3), pages 257-277, September.
    17. Buhai, I. Sebastian & van der Leij, Marco J., 2023. "A Social Network Analysis of Occupational Segregation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    18. Yuanyuan Chen & Le Wang & Min Zhang, 2018. "Informal search, bad search?: the effects of job search method on wages among rural migrants in urban China," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(3), pages 837-876, July.
    19. Fontaine, François, 2008. "Why are similar workers paid differently? the role of social networks," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(12), pages 3960-3977, December.
    20. Hellerstein, Judith K. & Kutzbach, Mark J. & Neumark, David, 2014. "Do labor market networks have an important spatial dimension?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 39-58.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy
    • C25 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions; Probabilities

    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:iza:izadps:dp3489. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.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.