Key findings

• Author: Biletta, Isabella; Vanderleyden, Julie; Brandsma, Nils; Weber, Tina
• Pages: 4-4

4

£The findings of this study suggest that your birthplace, or that of your parents, affects many

aspects of your working life. Having a foreign background has a negative influence on workers’

employment prospects, the types of job they get and their working conditions. This picture can

change considerably, however, depending on many factors, such as what aspect of working life

and which sex we look at. Being a first- or second-generation migrant is a decisive factor in many

respects.

£In terms of employment, first-generation migrants are performing better – they have higher

employment rates than natives in almost half the Member States, the reason being that the

main objective of their move to another country is usually to take up employment. Employment

of second-generation migrants is lower than of natives in most Member States. But being of

EU origin upends this statistic, because the highest employment rate in the EU as a whole is

found among second-generation migrants of EU origin. Overall, workers with a foreign

background are more likely to be unemployed than natives in a majority of countries.

£In many other aspects of work, second-generation migrants outperform the first generation and

show positive labour market integration. Second-generation migrants are more likely to occupy

high-skilled, high-paying jobs and are overrepresented in management (and professional jobs in

the case of males) compared to natives and the first generation. On several measures of working

conditions, they are close to native workers – similar percentages work in the public sector,

for instance. In other areas, however, they continue to struggle, experiencing poorer working

conditions than even first-generation migrants.

£First-generation migrants are more likely to work in the poorest-quality jobs and are strongly

overrepresented in elementary occupations – jobs such as porter, caretaker, delivery worker

and cleaner. They are less likely to have a permanent, full-time job than native workers,

while they are more likely to feel job insecurity and to have difficulty making ends meet.

£Particularly among workers with a tertiary education, the jobs obtained by workers with a

foreign background are not always commensurate with the level of education they have

attained. This is reflected in the fact that, in most EU countries, first-generation migrants are

more likely than natives to consider themselves to be overqualified for the jobs they hold.

Language barriers and a lack of recognition of skills and qualifications are the likely reasons

behind the poor match between human capital and occupation.

£The labour market disadvantage faced by women is exacerbated by having a foreign

background.

£Higher shares of workers with a foreign background, particularly first-generation migrants,

report experiencing discrimination linked to race, religion and nationality compared to natives.

Both among higher and lower earners, experiencing discrimination based on nationality and

race is linked to poorer working conditions and difficulty making ends meet.

Key findings

In this study, workers with a foreign background include first-generation migrants (people born

outside the country where they reside, whose parents were not born in that country either) and

second-generation migrants (people born in the country where they reside, with one or both

parents not born in that country).