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The Employment and Occupational Status of Migrants from Countries Experiencing Armed Conflict

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Abstract

This study examines the effect of armed conflict and human rights violations in countries of origin on migrant employment outcomes. It argues that armed conflict may have a disruptive impact on the educational system and the economic growth of the country of origin, which may negatively affect eventual employment outcomes after migration. Using country-level data on both armed conflicts and human rights violations and individual-level data from a representative sample of adults living in Canada, it finds that armed conflicts have a significant effect on employment and occupational status net of human rights violations, while human rights violations have no effect net of armed conflicts. Migrants from armed conflict countries, in particular those who arrived in Canada more recently, are more likely to be unemployed, and, in general, have lower occupational status compared to migrants from non-conflict countries and the native-born. Although they are more educated, most of their education was completed in their country of origin, which translates less often into employment success.

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Notes

  1. In results not shown, exploratory analyses showed that migrants from conflict countries were significantly more likely to participate in the labor force than migrants from non-conflict countries and the native-born. Though these results are interesting, the categories of answers limited further assessment because of the combination of retired and disabled into a single category.

  2. The analysis proceeded with both age and length of stay, since both had a significant association with one or both of the two employment outcomes. There is an important complexity, which restricts how many controls related to age could be incorporated in the analysis. Age at migration is age at the time of the interview minus length of stay (i.e., year of interview minus year of migration). It is therefore understandably closely related to current age and length of stay.

  3. Though high human rights violations and armed conflict are correlated, the correlation between the two is of 0.68, which is below the 0.80 threshold for high multicollinearity. Note also there appears to be no problems of multicollinearity in the remaining models in Tables 3 and 4. Independent variables in these models all had a correlation and a variance inflation factor that were no greater than 0.532 and 1.983.

  4. The non-significant association between the majority of the race/ethnicity variables and the probability of being unemployed vs. employed is surprising. However, it appears that the effect of race/ethnicity is not separate of the effect of armed conflict and that the effect of armed conflict persists even when race/ethnicity is controlled for. The small sample size on some of the race/ethnicity variables makes it difficult to separate the effect of these two. It is also possible that the effect of race/ethnicity interacts with migration status, including length of time lived in Canada and the origin context, which may be missed in this type of model.

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  1. Institute of Sociology, University of Göttingen, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 3, 37073, Göttingen, Germany

    Marie-Pier Joly

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Joly, MP. The Employment and Occupational Status of Migrants from Countries Experiencing Armed Conflict. Int. Migration & Integration 20, 1071–1095 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-018-00642-z

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