Economic Assimilation and the Labour Market Performance of British Refugees and Economic Migrants

The Quarterly Labour Force Survey contains useful information on the earnings and employment characteristics of immigrants and natives, including the country of origin of immigrants. This paper separates refugee and non-refugee immigrants using country of origin, UK arrival time and various immigration statistics on refugee sending countries. The labour market performance of these immigrant groups is compared. Refugee immigrants exhibit larger earnings penalties and higher unemployment propensities compared to non-refugee immigrants. This suggests that economic migrants are volunteers and therefore self-select into those who will do well. Refugees are forced to move. As a consequence refugees are relatively poor labour market performers. Further ethnic comparisons demonstrate lower earnings and employment for non-whites relative to whites (refugees and non-refugees), over and above all other human capital and socio-economic characteristics. Non-white refugees and South Asians exhibit the largest ethnic penalties, where there is no evidence that ethnic unemployment penalties diminish for second generation UK born South Asians. Finally, earnings assimilation patterns of refugees differ to those of non-refugees and white immigrant earnings show signs of assimilating, whereas those for South Asians and other non-white immigrants do not. Outline