Growth, Equal Opportunities, Migration and Markets

The 'migration crisis' is easily one of the biggest storms the EU has had to weather over the past decade. It has brought to light the limits of cooperation between Member States, lifted the veil on the horrors faced by migrants seeking refuge, and become fertile ground for a divisive ‘us vs them’ rhetoric across Europe. But there is another side effect of this crisis. While some 80 million workers in Europe lack the proper qualification for the job they have been hired to do, discrimination towards migrants, even highly skilled ones, is depriving the labour market of a significant resource and solutions to a rapidly ageing society and skills shortages. “Discrimination is not only problematic in terms of fairness, but it also limits a society’s capacity to employ and attract human resources most effectively. It is a major barrier to growth,” explains Neli Demireva, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex and coordinator of the GEMM project.

The GEMM project studied this barrier between 2015 and 2018. It collected field experiment data, analysed existing survey data and built its own understanding of real-life motivations behind migration decisions. Its objective: methodically fact-checking some of the most repeated myths around migrants’ role in society and how these impact the labour market.

Demireva and her team revealed some of the main trends related to job quality: “We found little evidence of migrants undercutting white Britons’ job quality. However, second-generation minority men, particularly Black Caribbean and Black African minority men may be vulnerable to a race-to-the-bottom facilitated by the competition with migrants. Our results are consistent with an ethnic hierarchy that places majority members on the top, non-white migrants at the bottom, and second-generation minority members somewhere in between.” Considering European societies at large, the project found that Muslim migrants and their children are particularly likely to see their qualifications and training discarded.

Overall, the differences between the majority population and minority groups are systematically in favour of the first group: in all five countries in the GEMM field experiment – Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the UK – ethnic minority applicants have a lower probability of being called back for a job interview than majority group applicants. “The GEMM field experiments show that the gap in call-back rates varies widely across countries,” Dr. Demireva notes. “Norway and the United Kingdom are the countries in the field experiment with the highest ethnic discrimination. We also see different trends as to which ethnic groups suffer the most: Nigerian or Pakistani-sounding names in the United Kingdom, Pakistani and Somali-sounding names in Norway, Turks and Lebanese candidates in Germany, for instance appear to be associated with high levels of penalty.”

To bridge these gaps, the GEMM consortium issued a list of recommendations. These include, for instance, a focus on production-relevant information from migrants, and institutional support for the translation of educational credentials into the local language (degree certificates for example) on the part of the receiving society. “Policy-makers need to tackle inequality if they want growth and innovation. More resources should be devoted to facilitating the recognition of credentials and supporting individuals in their labour market decisions,” Dr. Demireva concludes. More information on these recommendations can be found in the GEMM Policy brief in Focus