Labor market integration and childbearing behavior of immigrants in the European Union

Resumen

As of 2020, immigrants accounted for 12.4% of the European Union (EU) population. This is due to large flows from outside the EU and increased intra-EU migration, the latter caused by the recent EU enlargement processes of 2004 and 2007. In this scenario, the labor integration of immigrants and their childbearing behavior are key to understanding the economic, social and demographic dynamics of the EU. We present two studies on the labor performance of intra-EU migrants in main EU labor markets (Chapter 2), and three studies on the fertility of immigrants from outside the EU and their descendants in Spain (Chapter 3). In Chapter 2, we use annual data from the EU labor force survey between 2005 and 2016. We focus on the over-qualification experienced by intra-EU immigrants originating from new EU member states residing in old EU countries. We conclude that intra-EU immigrants originating from new member states have lower labor markets outcomes compared to host country nationals and immigrants originating from old member states. Interestingly, although the enlargement of the EU has meant the improvement of the legal status of immigrant workers originating from new member states, the transitional arrangements imposed by most old member states have been an obstacle to full European integration. In Chapter 3, we use a new database that links Spain¿s 2011 Census with the Natural Movement of the Population records from 2011 to 2015. We study various aspects of the fertility of first, 1.5 and second generation Latin American and Maghrebi immigrants. Our results show that first-generation Maghrebi immigrants tend to maintain the typical childbearing behavior of their origin countries to a greater extent than first-generation Latin American immigrants. We also find that while the childbearing behavior of Latin American immigrant descendants is very close to that of native Spanish women, the fertility of Maghrebi immigrant descendants falls in between that of their parents and that of native women.