Labour market entry of migrants in Germany: Does cultural diversity matter?

This paper provides an analysis of the labour market entry of migrant youth in Germany after completion of an apprenticeship. We are particularly interested in the impact of local cultural diversity on a successful career start. Focusing on the cohort of people completing apprenticeships in 2000, we distinguish between Turks, citizens of former Yugoslavia, EU15 migrants and other migrants compared with Germans as the reference group. A multinomial probit model reveals that Turkish apprentices and those from the other migrant groups have a significantly lower probability of transition into the primary labour market, whereas EU15 migrants do not differ from Germans in this respect. In addition to controlling for individual and firm characteristics as well as occupation, we explicitly include regional characteristics. Our results show that if there is a high level of cultural diversity, young migrants will find employment more easily. In contrast to other studies which emphasize the impact of friends and family ties, we conclude that networks and information flows which are not restricted to an individual's own ethnic group increase the likelihood of finding a job.