Abstract
Descendants of immigrants of non-European origin are much more likely to be unemployed than people in the French mainstream population, even after controlling for differences in structural characteristics (education, experience, age, region of residence, etc.). After entering employment, their wages are lower than those of their mainstream counterparts, although the wage penalty is relatively small. These groups also feel strongly that they are subject to discrimination in recruitment procedures and career advancement. When the two ways of measuring discrimination are matched against each other, we find that the strength of perceived discrimination at individual level is correlated with the degree of inequality measured on the labour market. Individuals who are unemployed despite observed personal characteristics that would be favourable to employment if they belonged to the mainstream population are also those who express the strongest perception of discrimination.
A larger analysis of wage inequalities, including a study of differences by origin in working hours and commuting time as well as intergenerational job mobility, was published in: Meurs D., Lhommeau B., Okba M., 2015, Emplois, salaires et mobilité intergénérationnelle (chapter 8), in: Beauchemin C., Hamel C., Simon P. (ed.), Trajectoires et origines : enquête sur la diversité des populations en France, Paris, Ined (collection Grandes Enquêtes), p. 233–262. Other results regarding access to employment and discrimination are available in: Brinbaum Y., Meurs D., Primon J.-L., 2015, Situation sur le marché du travail: statut d’activité, accès à l’emploi et discrimination (chapter 7), in: Beauchemin C., Hamel C., Simon P. (ed.), Trajectoires et origines : enquête sur la diversité des populations en France, Paris, Ined (collection Grandes Enquêtes), p. 203–232.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The TeO survey methodology is presented in an Appendix at the end of the book.
- 3.
Hourly wage is defined as reported monthly wages divided by monthly working time. Reported working hours were truncated at 50 hours per week, corresponding to the maximum number of hours of work per week (48 hours under ordinary law, 50 hours for truck drivers).
- 4.
We use the three following variables: “During the past five years, were you ever unjustly refused employment?” and, for those who have already worked, “During the past five years, have you ever been unfairly refused promotion?” and “During the past five years, have you ever been laid off unfairly?”
- 5.
The drawback of this method is that it attributes high values to individuals whose predicted probability of being unemployed is close to 0.5, i.e. those whose actual situation is not well predicted by the model. To eliminate this distortion, we constructed a variant where we estimated a latent variable on the basis of the model coefficients, and then simulated the residues such that the sum of the latent variable and the residue would be positive if the individual was unemployed, and negative otherwise. The simulation of residues yields a continuous normal distribution between −1 and 1. This variable reflects only whether individuals were unemployed or not, once their individual characteristics are taken into account, without the use of any underlying metric. The results of this variant, not presented here, are similar to those obtained with the first method.
- 6.
Blackaby et al. (2005) introduced this measure in an equation measuring the probability of reporting experiences of discrimination among a set of British academics, and found a positive correlation between the two phenomena.
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Meurs, D. (2018). Employment and Wages of Immigrants and Descendants of Immigrants: Measures of Inequality and Perceived Discrimination. In: Beauchemin, C., Hamel, C., Simon, P. (eds) Trajectories and Origins: Survey on the Diversity of the French Population. INED Population Studies, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76638-6_4
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