The eastern enlargements of the European Union (EU) and the extension of the free movement of workers to the new member states' citizens unleashed significant east-west migration flows in a labor market with more than half a billion people. Although many old member states applied transitional...

Three decades ago most immigrants to Australia with work entitlements came as permanent settlers. Today the annual allocation of temporary visas, with work entitlements, outnumbers permanent settler visas by a ratio of three to one. The new environment, with so many temporary visa holders, has...

This paper uses survey data on employment immigrants in Australia and the United States to identify the main determinants of the size and skill composition of employment immigrants to developed countries. Our approach emphasizes the key roles of world prices of skills and country proximity. Our...

European Union economies are pressed by (i) a demographic change that induces population ageing and a decline of the workforce, and (ii) a split labour market that is characterized by high levels of unemployment for low-skilled people and a simultaneous shortage of skilled workers. This lack of...

This article studies the importance of local conditions for the employment integration of refugees in Sweden, this in contrast to most studies on immigrant economic integration primarily conducted on the national level or for the larger cities. The data used in the analysis is on male and female...

The number of refugees worldwide is now 12 million, up from 3 million in the early 1970s. And the number seeking asylum in the developed world increased tenfold, from about 50,000 per annum to half a million over the same period. Governments and international agencies have grappled with the twin...

Immigrants ascend to citizenship at differential rates in Canada. Why is this so? This paper investigates the economic costs and benefits derived from citizenship to rationalize the differential rates of citizenship ascension. Canadian earnings evidence confirms the sizable economic benefits of...

Based on the current European discussion about immigration policy, this paper gives an overview of central economic consequences of immigration for a host country=s labor market. The most important theoretical arguments are presented and evaluated against the available empirical evidence. The...

This paper investigates Dutch immigrants’ naturalisation decision and how naturalisation affects their employment chances and wages in the Netherlands. The population under consideration consists mainly of refugees from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia and former Yugoslavia, and a minority of...

Economists studying the economic behaviour of immigrants have tended to avoid serious interdisciplinary work. I argue that when presented with a particular set of research questions that lend themselves to a utility maximisation framework, an economist will be able to pursue interdisciplinary...