Essays on Migration and Labour Markets

This thesis explores the relationships between immigration and labour markets. The work consists of three empirical papers that examine particular aspects of this relationship.<br/><br/>The first paper investigates the hypothesis that immigrants are attracted by a particular labour market institution, the minimum wage. The empirical analysis is implemented by assessing the impact that an exogenous increase in the federal USA minimum wage has on the immigration flows of low-skilled individuals. The main findings are that low-wage workers move to States where the growth of the minimum wage is larger, while high-wage individuals are insensitive to the policy.<br/>The second paper analyses the effects of immigration in the host labour market, in particular on the mobility of previous residents. The main objective is to investigate if inflows of recent immigrants determine an out-migration of natives<br/>and earlier immigrants. This is achieved by analysing patterns of internal migration using information on the local authority of origin and destination and on the skill level of individuals. The analysis demonstrates that, while UK-born<br/>individuals and recent immigrants move to similar locations, earlier immigrants are instead displaced, suggesting closer substitutability with the newcomers.<br/><br/>The impact of ethnic networks on employment outcomes is the final topic of the thesis. The important feature of this study is to examine this effect separately for immigrants and natives. This is achieved by analysing detailed data on ethnic<br/>enclaves from two Censuses of England and Wales, which are used to construct an index that captures local interactions. The results show that, for the majority of immigrant groups, a larger informal network is associated with higher employment probabilities. For the group of natives, there is no evidence that living in an enclave is detrimental to employment, and the effect is, at worst, zero.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Ph.D.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Southampton

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Giulietti, Corrado

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Wahba, Jackie
• Schluter, Christian