Getting In and Staying In? The Relative Contributions of Entering and Exiting Employment to Early Labour Market Trajectories of Migrants’ Daughters Versus Native Women

Abstract

In most European countries, women’s labour force participation differs strongly by migration background. As employment trajectories unfold as a result of the interplay of employment entries and exits, employment gaps might be rooted in differential risks of entering and/or exiting employment. However, available research mainly addresses differences by migration background in employment rates or the initial school-to-work transition, thereby obscuring the underlying dynamic process through which repeated employment entries and exits accumulate and shape diverging employment trajectories. Therefore, this study uses longitudinal microdata on women’s employment trajectories in tandem with innovative multistate hazard and microsimulation models to quantify the relative importance of differential risks of entering and exiting employment as dynamics shaping differences in early employment by women’s migration background in Belgium. Our results indicate that differences in early employment between migrants’ daughters and women without a migration background are mainly driven by lower probabilities of entering employment. Except for second generation Southern European women (for whom the employment difference with native women is also limited), the barriers for employment entry clearly outweigh the barriers for employment stability. This is particularly true for 1.5 generation women who migrated after the age of 12, as a sizeable share never enters employment during the first four years after graduation. Hence, our results indicate that particularly policies aimed at reducing barriers to employment entry could substantially enhance the early employment of migrants’ daughters in Belgium.