Variétés de capitalisme ou entrepreneurs institutionnels? Une application aux cas de la sous‐traitance et de la formation de la main‐d'œuvre au Québec

Based on the theory of institutional entrepreneurs, this article examines the coexistence of different forms of governance within a given economic space. Since the approach based on models of capitalism does not make it possible to account for this institutional diversity on the same territory, a theoretical perspective centred on the innovative action of social actors has been used to explain such a phenomenon. Our demonstration is based on a comparative analysis of two recent cases of transformation of public labour policies in Quebec: outsourcing and labour force training. These two major contemporary employment relations issues which are part of the same environment, have brought into play the same social actors in very similar institutional frameworks and have nevertheless led to contrasting dynamics and results. The actor's autonomy, more than a model, allows us to understand the different institutional trajectories that have thus been adopted.     

‘Survival Employment’: Gender and Deskilling among African Immigrants in Canada

Recent research points to a growing gap between immigrant and native‐born outcomes in the Canadian labour market at the same time as selection processes emphasize recruiting highly educated newcomers. Drawing on interviews with well‐educated men and women who migrated from countries in sub‐Saharan Africa, this paper explores the gendered processes that produce weak economic integration in Canada. Three‐quarters of research participants experienced downward occupational mobility, with the majority employed in low‐skilled, low‐wage, insecure forms of “survival employment”. In a gendered labour market, where common demands for “Canadian experience”, “Canadian credentials” and “Canadian accents” were uneven across different sectors of the labour market, women faced particular difficulties finding “survival employment”; in the long run, however, women’s greater investment in additional post‐secondary education within Canada placed them in a somewhat better position than men. The policy implications of this study are fourfold: first, we raise questions about the efficacy of Canadian immigration policies that prioritize the recruitment of well‐educated immigrants without addressing the multiple barriers that result in deskillling; second, we question government policies and settlement practices that undermine more equitable economic integration of immigrants; third, we address the importance of tackling the “everyday racism” that immigrants experience in the Canadian labour market; and finally, we suggest the need to re‐think narrowly defined notions of economic integration in light of the gendered nature of contemporary labour markets, and immigrants’ own definitions of what constitutes meaningful integration.     

Immigrants and ‘New Poverty’: The Case of Canada1

Studies of the economic status of recent immigrants to the United States have questioned the generalizability of some earlier findings based on assimilation theory. In Canada, however, little research has been done on this issue, and that has left mixed results. The present study attempts to address the economic performance of immigrants in Canada through an examination of their poverty status. This is particularly important now because, since the late 1980s, many industrial nations including Canada have been subjected to an unexpected surge of poverty known as ‘new poverty.’ The findings indicate that immigrants in Canada are consistently overrepresented among the poor; that their poverty rates are particularly high in larger cities, which have larger concentrations of immigrants; and that among immigrants, the poverty rates are higher for visible minorities, who are mostly recent immigrants. One particularly surprising finding was that the second‐generation immigrants, who were expected to outperform their parents, had higher poverty rates. A series of logistic regression models are developed to shed some light on the possible reasons behind these trends. Of the three sets of potential contributors – human capital, assimilation and structural factors – the first two were found more relevant. The models also revealed that the human capital factors were less rewarding for immigrants than natives.     

Needed but Not Liked – The Impact of Labor Market Policies on Natives’ Opinions about Immigrants

This article builds on the notion that immigrants’ integration into the labor market benefits migrants and shapes natives’ opinions about immigrants. Using insights from the newest literature on labor immigration and drawing upon the literature on attitudes toward immigrants, the article explores in a multilevel design the impact that regulations in the EU member states concerning immigrants’ access to domestic labor markets have on threat perceptions and on opinions about immigrants’ economic role. It finds that labor market regulations have a positive effect on opinions about immigrants’ economic role and reduce the negative relationships between precarious labor market status and opinions about the economic role. However, a robust effect of labor market regulations on threat perceptions was not found. Our results imply that labor market incorporation rules need to be accompanied by other measures to close the gap between natives and immigrants.     

EMPLOYMENT DYNAMICS OF IMMIGRANTS VERSUS NATIVES: EVIDENCE FROM THE BOOM‐BUST PERIOD IN SPAIN, 2000–2011

This article studies whether the durations in unemployment and employment for immigrants and natives respond differently to changes in economic conditions and to the receipt of unemployment benefits. Using Spanish administrative data for the period 2000–2011, we estimate multi‐spell duration models that disentangle unobserved heterogeneity from true duration dependence. Our findings suggest that immigrants are more sensitive to changes in economic conditions both in terms of unemployment and employment hazards. The effect of the business cycle is not constant but decreases with duration at a higher rate among immigrants. We provide evidence that the higher job separation rates and lower capital‐labor complementarity of immigrants are mechanisms that are possibly compatible with these results. We also find evidence of a disincentive effect of unemployment benefits on unemployment duration, which is stronger for immigrants, but only at the beginning of the unemployment spell, especially under good economic conditions. Finally, unemployment benefits increase job match quality only for native workers with temporary contracts. (JEL J64, J61, C23, C41, J65)     

Migrants’ Intention to Move or Stay in their Initial Destination

The objective of this article is to find out why immigrants intend to stay in or leave their initial destination. The insight into such factors could help develop policy measures to deal with potential out‐migration, especially from the regions that view international migration as a solution to their demographic and economic difficulties. The study uses multinomial logistic regression to estimate the strength of association between migrants' intention to move and immigration category, human capital, economic and social factors. The data come from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia. The findings show that different groups of migrants have different propensities to move or stay in their initial destination. Employer‐sponsored migrants are even less likely to intend to relocate than family class. Highly educated and skilled migrants tend to be more likely to express the intention to move or have doubts. Satisfactory employment has a positive impact on retention.     

Ethnic Enclaves,Networks and Self‐Employment among Middle Eastern Immigrants in Sweden

The proportion of immigrants from countries in the Middle East living in Sweden has increased since the 1970s, and it is a well‐known fact that immigrants from the Middle East suffer from low earnings and high rates of unemployment on the Swedish labour market. There are often great hopes that self‐employment will enable immigrants to improve their labour market situation. Further, in Sweden as in many other countries, the question of whether the existence of ethnic enclaves are good or bad for immigrants’ earnings and employment opportunities has also been widely debated. This paper presents a study of the extent to which Middle Eastern ethnic enclaves and networks in Sweden enhance or hinder immigrants’ self‐employment. The results show that the presence of ethnic enclaves increases the propensity for self‐employment. Thus, immigrants in ethnic enclaves provide their co‐ethnics with goods and services that Swedish natives are not able to provide. The results also show that ethnic networks seem to be an obstacle to immigrant self‐employment. One explanation is that an increase in network size implies increased competition for customers among self‐employed immigrants. The question of whether ethnic enclaves are good or bad for the integration of immigrants into the labour market has been widely debated. The results of this paper provide us with information about the integration puzzle. Ethnic enclaves seem to enhance self‐employment propensities among Middle Eastern immigrants in Sweden.     

Le temps du remue-ménage. Conditions d'emploi et de travail de femmes de chambre

It is now admitted that part-time work is a signal of inequality between the sexes, in both work and family. By focusing on cleavages among women, an analysis is made of how worktime and the company’s position as a subcontractor combine so as to produce inequality among wage-earners by assigning them heterogeneous statuses and thus forcing some of them to cope with precarious working, employment and living conditions. This study of the working and employment conditions of chamber maids in France focuses on those who work part or full-time in cleaning companies under contract with other firms. Inside this rather unskilled group of women, part-time work stresses the differences produced by subcontracting and worsens the inequality between stable, full-time employees and the women subcontracted at part-time who do the same job. These cleavages set off a strike among these part-time workers. Analyzing this labor dispute has shed light on the social relations running through the firm and on invisible issues in work and employment for these women with jobs in the shadows.     

U.S. Immigration Policy at a Crossroads: Should the U.S. Continue Its Family‐Friendly Policy?

An ongoing debate is whether the U.S. should continue its family‐based admission system, which favors visas for family members of U.S. citizens and residents, or adopt a more skills‐based system, replacing family visas with employment‐based visas. In many ways, this is a false dichotomy: family‐friendly policies attract highly‐skilled immigrants regardless of their own visa path, and there are not strong reasons why a loosening of restrictions on employment migrants need be accompanied by new restrictions on family‐based immigration. Moreover, it is misleading to think that only employment‐based immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy. Recent immigrants, who have mostly entered via kinship ties, are economically productive, a fact hidden by a flawed methodology that underlies most economic analyses of immigrant economic assimilation.     

Immigrants’ Children’s Transition to Secondary School in Italy

Choosing a secondary school represents an important step in the lives of students in Italy, in that it has a strong bearing on their ultimate educational achievement and labor force trajectory. In this article, we analyze the effect of generational status and length of residence on the transition to secondary school among immigrants living in Italy. Using data from the ITAGEN2 follow‐up, we analyze scholastic results from the middle school final exam and the choice of secondary school among the adolescents in Italy. Children of immigrants are more likely to have inferior outcomes on the middle school exam and to enroll in vocational and polytechnic schools. Our multivariate results indicate that, after controlling for the family’s human capital and other key background factors, immigrant students show greater propensity to choose a vocational path. Differences between immigrants and natives in secondary school tracks are also manifested when previous scholastic results are taken into account.     

Moderniser la confiance L'assurance-qualité comme décontextualisation de la sous-traitance industrielle*

Quality assurance is an institution typical of the global economy in the context of advanced modernity. It decontextualizes economic behaviour in time and space (Luhmann, Giddens). An empirical study of the relations between Alcan Canada Ltd. and five subcontracting firms operating in the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean area of Quebec shows that the abstract and extralocal standards of quality assurance transform the subcontractors social processes of selection and performance evaluation. The participation of quality assurance experts in the inter-firm relationships lessens the reliance on traditional relationships of trust, in favour of a new trust in abstract systems and expertise. L'assurance-qualité est une institution typique de la globalisation de l'économie dans le contexte de la modernité avancée. Elle décontex-tualise les comportements économiques dans le temps et dans l'espace (Luhmann, Giddens). Une étude empirique des relations d'Alcan Canada limitée avec cinq entreprises de la région du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean (Québec) montre que les standards abstraits et extralocaux de l'assurance-qualité changent le processus social de sélection et d'évaluation du rendement des sous-traitants. L'intervention des experts de l'assurance-qualité dans les relations interfirmes diminue l'importance des rapports de confiance traditionnels au profit d'une nouvelle confiance-systeme.     

Attachements indésirables, attachements acceptables : autour d’un échange de seringues en prison

To inquire into innovation in public policy, attention is focused on the work done by a group that proposed an innovative project for “preventing” drug-use in a prison in Luxembourg. After several events and reversals, the final arrangements, which brought together disparate interests, was grounded in the contingent attachment of various persons to the leading role played by a general practitioner and the “permanent attachment” of authorized needles distributed in a case. In a situation where attempts to work out a theory in terms of “positions”, “power” and “control” would have difficulty coming up with a convincing explanation of this surprising process, preference is given to describing this innovation in terms of “passages” and “attachments”.     

Economic Benefits of Self‐Employment for Canadian Immigrants

This paper evaluates the economic benefits of self‐employment in Canada for 12 groups of ethno‐racial immigrants. It tests whether or not their self‐employment earnings are higher or lower than similar groups in wage and salary employment, whether ethnic minorities earn more or less from self‐employment compared to White immigrants, and whether self‐employment earnings of immigrant groups vary by their industrial sectors of employment. Using the Canadian Census 2006, I show that self‐employed ethno‐racial immigrants earn less than White immigrants. I also show that the economic benefits of self‐employment depend on the ethno‐racial groups and the industrial mix of their self‐employment. Cet article évalue les avantages économiques du travail indépendant au Canada pour 12 groupes d'immigrés ethnoraciaux. Il teste si les revenus du travail indépendant sont supérieurs ou inférieurs aux groupes similaires au sujet de salaire et de travail avec le salaire annuel, si les minorités ethniques gagnent plus ou moins de travail indépendant par rapport aux immigrés blancs, et si les revenus du travail indépendant des groupes immigrés varient par leurs secteurs industriels de travail. En utilisant le Recensement du Canada de 2006, je montre que les immigrés ethnoraciaux qui sont indépendants gagnent moins que les immigrés blancs. Je montre aussi que les avantages économiques dépendent des groupes ethnoraciaux et du mélange industriel de leur travail indépendant.     

The effects of 9/11 on intermarriage between natives and immigrants to the U.S.

The existing literature generally finds a negative impact of the 9/11 tragedy on immigrants?? labor market performance, consistent with increased discrimination in the labor market and stricter immigration policies. In this paper, we examine the impact of this tragic event on a particular measure of immigrants?? social outcomes??marriage with a native or intermarriage. We find that the tragic event actually increases Hispanic immigrants?? probability of being married to a native. We suggest that our results could be explained by that after 9/11, the deteriorated labor market conditions, along with tightened immigration policies, may have led to increased incentives of immigrants to marry natives. This effect is large relative to the potential discrimination effect, if any, that could reduce natives?? willingness to marry an immigrant. We also find that the magnitude of the effect is much smaller in the years immediately following 9/11 and becomes larger over time; and that there exists a large, statistically significant gender difference in the effects of 9/11 on intermarriage outcomes. Finally, we conduct indirect tests of proposed explanations; and our results imply existence of economic gains from intermarriage, and that discrimination may indeed exist.     

Greek immigrants in Australia: demographic developments and economic integration

"The purpose of this article is to present and analyse the migration, economic standing and economic performance of Greeks in Australia and to make a comparative assessment with the Australian population. The demographic and education characteristics of Greek immigrants, and to some extent second generation ethnic Greeks, and their bearing on immigrant employment and income are investigated. Intertemporal developments and intergenerational and interethnic changes are explored in order to identify and explain similarities and differences, or inequalities, between Greek immigrants and the total Australian population." (EXCERPT)     

Poverty among long-term united states immigrants

In this paper we analyze the economic and social characteristics of impoverished long-term immigrants. We investigate in what ways this group differs from poor natives and what factors contribute towards the economic success or failure of long-term immigrants. We found that poor long-term immigrants are more likely than poor natives to live in central cities and to work full-time, and less likely to live in non-female-headed households. Long-term immigrants from refugee countries are over six times as likely ana immigrants from Mexico over three times as likely to be poor as long-term immigrants from Europe, even after considering family structure, education, and citizenship. Also, immigrants who live in single female-headed families are considerably more likely to be poor than those who live in married-couple families, and immigrants in extended families are less likely to be poor than those who are not. The welfare reform bill redefines eligibility criteria for immigrants with respect to participation in Food Stamps, SSI and AFDC. Because of the high risk of poverty among long-term immigrants (particularly refugees), their low rates of naturalization, and the predominance of extended families, it is likely that long-term immigrants will suffer economic setbacks as a result of welfare reform. We posit that this economic hardship is exacerbated by the fact that anti-poverty policies are not tailored to the circumstances of long-term immigrants, many of whom already work full-time     

The Times They Are A‐Changin’: Declining Immigrant Employment Opportunities in Scandinavia1

This article compares and contrasts male immigrant labor market experiences in Sweden and Denmark during the period 1985–1995. Using register‐based panel data sets from Sweden and Denmark, a picture of the employment assimilation process of immigrants from Norway, Poland, and Turkey is presented. The comparative approach shows that immigrants in Sweden and Denmark experienced similar declines in employment prospects between 1985 and 1995 despite quite different developments of aggregate labor market conditions. A possible explanation is that the changing organizational structure – toward more flexible work organization – has resulted in a decrease in the attractiveness of immigrant employees due to the increasing importance of country‐specific skills and informal human capital.     

Moving Up in Rural America: Economic Attainment of Nonmetro Latino Immigrants

Rapid Hispanic population growth represents a pronounced demographic transformation in many nonmetropolitan counties, particularly since 1990. Its considerable public policy implications stem largely from high proportions of new foreign‐born residents. Despite the pressing need for information on new immigrants in nonmetro counties and a bourgeoning scholarship on new rural destinations, few quantitative analyses have measured systematically the social and economic well‐being of Latino immigrants. This study analyzes the importance of place for economic well‐being, an important public policy issue related to rural Hispanic population growth. We consider four measures of economic mobility: full‐time, year‐round employment; home ownership; poverty status; and income exceeding the median national income. We conduct this analysis for 2000 and 2006–2007 to capture two salient periods of nonmetro Hispanic population growth, using a typology that distinguishes among nonmetropolitan areas by the categories of “traditional” immigrant destinations concentrated in the Southwest and Northwest, “new” immigrant destinations to capture recent and rapid Hispanic population growth in the Midwest and Southeast, and “all other” rural destinations as a reference category representing more typical nonmetro population trends. We also compare our results to those for metropolitan destinations. We find that place type matters little for stable employment but more so for wealth accumulation and income security and mobility. Compared with urban Latino immigrants, rural Latino immigrants exhibit higher rates of homeownership as well as greater likelihoods of falling into poverty and lower likelihoods of earning a measure of U.S. median income. From 2000 to 2006–2007, rural‐urban differences deteriorated slightly in favor of urban areas. We conclude by discussing implications of these findings and those of addressing rural immigrant economic well‐being more generally.     

Immigrants’ Returns to Schooling in Sweden

The aim of this paper is to find out if the returns to immigrants’ schooling are lower than the returns to natives’ schooling. In addition the paper tries to establish whether immigrants who invest in different amounts of Swedish education also differ in their returns to schooling. For immigrants arriving in Sweden as adults, the returns to schooling are on average one log point lower than for natives. The results show that returns to schooling are considerably higher for immigrants who arrived in Sweden during compulsory school age than for immigrants who arrived in Sweden after compulsory school age. Moreover, immigrants who complete their schooling in Sweden show, in general, much higher returns than immigrants with only foreign schooling.