This paper looks at the e ffect of cultural barriers on the skill selection of international migration. The data covers bilateral migration stocks by skill level in 2000 from about 99 sending countries to the main 15 destination countries. We use genetic distance as a proxy for cultural distance...

This paper looks at the effect of the relatedness of two countries, measured by their genetic distance, on educational migrant selection. We analyze bilateral country-level education-specific migration stocks from 85 sending countries to the 15 main destination countries in 2000 and show that...

This paper proposes a theory of migration decisions in which cultural traits play a role. Individuals are assumed to value comfort (high wages) and conformity (interactions with individuals who share similar world views). Regions are assumed to differ economically (average wages) and culturally...

We examine the impact of the Americanization of names on the labor market outcomes of migrants. We construct a novel longitudinal data set of naturalization records in which we track a complete sample of migrants who naturalize by 1930. We find that migrants who Americanized their names...

The assumption that all migrations are permanent, which pervaded the early microdata-based research on immigrant career profiles, is not supported by the empirical evidence. Rather, many - if not most - migrations appear to be temporary. In this paper, therefore, we illustrate the estimation...

We provide an overview of the integration of refugees into the labor markets of a number of high-income countries. Discussing the ways in which refugees and economic migrants are differently selected and so might be expected to perform differently in a host country's labor market, we examine...