The labour market disadvantage of immigrant women extends beyond the labour market disadvantage of native women, and differences in their demographic profiles alone cannot explain that. How can such an additional immigrant-specific gender gap be explained? In this article we investigate the role of reason for migration. Information on type of visa, or on motivation for migration, is not routinely available in standard data sources, and we have therefore to rely on the 2008 and 2014 editions of the EU LFS, which elicited additional information on immigrants and specifically the main reason that led them to migrate. Figure 1 shows the answers given to this question separately for male and female immigrants, in 2014.
Figure 1: Three women out of five migrate for family reasons
Reasons for migration, by gender (2014)
Across Europe, almost 60% of women in 2014 migrated for family reasons, and only 27% for employment reasons. In contrast, just 39% of immigrant men migrated for family reasons, which indicates that women often migrate to reunite with their partner, something that happens less frequently among men.
Across origins, migration for family reasons is significantly more common among African women (almost three quarters in 2014), while it is least common among American women (45%). Women from non-EU countries migrate for family reasons more often than those from an EU country (61 v. 56%). The receiving country where family migration is more common for non-EU women is France (77%), while the lowest shares of women who are family migrant can be found in Greece (43%), Spain (43%), Malta (34%) and Cyprus (27%). While some of these differences are understandable, and largely time invariant, if we look at non-EU migrants, who therefore require a formal visa to enter European countries, the share of family migrants is significantly higher across all origins among recent than among earlier migrants: two thirds of immigrant women who arrived in Europe between 2009 and 2013 are family migrants, which contrasts with 57% among those who arrived between before 2009. Conversely, the share of women who migrated for employment reasons decreases by almost exactly the same amount: from 27% among non-recent immigrant women, to 19% among those who arrived in the five years before 2014. This large increase in the share of family migrants is largely due to the increasing restrictiveness of European migration polices. Over time, the number of work visas issued in European countries has been substantially restricted, leading to an increasing relevance of the family migration channel for new migrants. In fact, the share of family migrants across EU women, who do not need a visa to move to other EU countries and are therefore not affected by changes in visa policies, is similar between both those who migrated before and after 2009.
The increased use of family visa as main migration channel into Europe, especially for immigrant women, might however explain part of their labour market disadvantage. In fact, the immigrant-native employment gap is much larger among immigrants who migrated for family reasons, while those who migrated for employment reasons are on average at an advantage with respect to natives. The immigrant-native employment differential for immigrants who migrated for family reasons is -30 percentage points after 1-4 years since the migration, but the disadvantage decreases over time. After more than 15 years since migration, it reaches -12 percentage points.
However, there are very wide gender differences (Figure 33). The differential for men is close to zero and non-significant, particularly after the first four years in the country. On the contrary, immigrant women who have been in the host country for 1-4 years have a 40 percentage points disadvantage with respect to native women, which does not depend on differences in their age and education profiles. Although the gap decreases over time, the employment probability differential for immigrant women is still 20 p.p. even after 15 years since migration. On the other hand, both immigrant men and women who migrated for employment reasons are at an advantage with respect to natives (8 p.p.), although the differential decreases over time. For the first 14 years since migration the unconditional gap in employment probability is larger than the difference relative to natives with similar age-education profiles, indicating that immigrants’ characteristics make them in general more employable than natives. However, possibly due to differential return migration, after more than 15 years the unconditional differential becomes negative for women, whereas the conditional differential does not change.
Figure 2: Even 15 years after migration, immigrant women who migrated for family reasons are strongly disadvantaged in the labour market.
Immigrant – native gap in employment probability, by gender and reason for migration (2008 and 2014)
