Labour market integration of first- and second-generation immigrants: an inter-generational analysis

Dominique Meurs, Université de Paris II
Ariane Pailhe, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Patrick Simon, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

We study the labour market integration of second-generation immigrants compared with first-generation immigrants and French natives. Do immigrants educated in France have career opportunities comparable to those of French natives? Do children born in France whose parents were immigrants during mass migration reproduce the socio-economic positions of their parents or do they have an equivalent social mobility compared with French natives? Do the trajectories differ according to the countries of origin? The data set used here comes from the “Etude de l’histoire familiale” (INSEE, 1999). We show that the performance of first- and second-generation immigrants is far from converging with that of native French people. The risk of being unemployed is much higher for first- and second-generation immigrants than for people whose parents were both born in France. They are more often in precarious employment and they are still stuck on the lowest rungs of the social hierarchy.