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Getting Off on the Wrong Foot: The Long-Term Effects of Missing a Large-Scale Amnesty for Immigrant Workers

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Abstract

We estimate the long-run effects of ineligibility for legalization on immigrants' formal employment and assimilation at work. Our empirical approach exploits the exogenous change in probability of obtaining legal status induced by a 2002 Italian amnesty program targeting irregular foreign workers. We show that immigrants unexposed to the amnesty have a 15% lower probability of being regularly employed a decade later than their counterparts. They also experience a deterioration in their working conditions in the long run, with increases in job immobility and segregation, and a decline in linguistic assimilation.

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  • Claudio Deiana & Ludovica Giua & Roberto Nisticò, 2021. "Getting Off on the Wrong Foot: The Long-Term Effects of Missing a Large-Scale Amnesty for Immigrant Workers," CSEF Working Papers 625, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    • Handle: RePEc:sef:csefwp:625
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Undocumented immigrants; Amnesty program; Formal employment; Discrimination; Segregation.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • K37 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Immigration Law

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