Racialized Labour Market Incorporation? African Immigrants and the Role of Education‐Occupation Mismatch in Earnings
| Published date | 01 August 2017 |
| Date | 01 August 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12352 |
| Author | Rebbeca Tesfai |
Racialized Labour Market Incorporation?
African Immigrants and the Role of
Education-Occupation Mismatch in Earnings
Rebbeca Tesfai*
U.S. immigration policy debates increasingly center on attracting highly-skilled immigrants.
African immigrants, in particular, exhibit high levels of over-education. But questions remain
about whether African immigrants’skills are appropriately utilized in the U.S. labour market.
This paper uses U.S. Census and American Community Survey data to determine whether
Africans’over-education leads to a corresponding wage disadvantage. I also investigate
whether search and match, imperfect transferability, or queuing theory describes African immi-
grants’wage outcomes. I find that, while African and Asian immigrants have similarly high
rates of college education and over-education, Africans experience significantly larger wage
disadvantages due to over-education. African immigrants’low wages are closer to that of U.S.
and Caribbean-born blacks indicating that queuing theory describes their wage disadvantage.
These findings suggest the need for policy addressing racial disparities in the labour market
rather than new immigration policy.
INTRODUCTION
Unlike Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia –countries using a skill-based immigration sys-
tem –the vast majority of immigrants to the U.S. enter the country on family-based visas.
Recently, however, U.S. immigration policy debates decidedly favoured skill-based immigration
(Green, Kler et al., 2007). In 2007, and again in 2013, the Senate considered bills aiming to
restructure the immigration system to award a larger proportion of visas based on education and
skill (Weiner, 2007; Martin, 2013). These political debates were prompted by public interest: in
2014 one in six Americans stated that immigration was the most important problem in the U.S.
(Saad, 2014). American attitudes have been attributed to ethnocentrism (Hainmueller and Hopkins,
2015) and the presumption that low-skilled immigrants enter the U.S. at a high rate (Hainmueller
and Hiscox, 2010), making them less successful in the labour market. However, policy initiatives
and public concerns do not (1) reflect current immigrant characteristics or (2) address high-skilled
immigrants’ability to translate their skills into labour market success (i.e. earn wages commensu-
rate to the U.S.-born). Specifically, Africans –one of the fastest growing (Capps, McCabe et al.,
2012) and most highly educated (Kent, 2007) immigrant groups in the country –have largely been
left out of discussions regarding high-skilled immigrants’labour market outcomes.
Approximately 1/3 of all immigrants have a college degree, and the foreign-born share of the
college-educated population has increased over the last two decades (Zong and Batalova, 2016).
Africans exemplify how high-skilled immigrants are entering the U.S. even without a skill-based
visa system. Africans are much more likely than other groups to be admitted as refugees (Capps,
* Temple University, Philadelphia
doi: 10.1111/imig.12352
©2017 The Author
International Migration ©2017 IOM
International Migration Vol. 55 (4) 2017
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
McCabe et al., 2012; Anderson, 2015). They have also become less likely to enter the U.S. on
diversity and employment visas –visas with education/skill requirements –and more likely to do
so on family-based visas.
1
With these entry visa changes, 70 per cent of Africans entering the
country between 2000 and 2013 came to the United States on family-based visas or as refugees/
asylees (Kent, 2007; Anderson, 2015).
The vast majority of Africans now enter the country on visas without skills requirements, yet
Africans are still among the most highly skilled groups in the U.S. Forty per cent of African immi-
grants between the ages of 25 and 50 have at least a college degree, while the corresponding figure
for non-Hispanic U.S.-born whites (whites) and foreign-born Asians (the most highly educated
immigrant group) are 36 per cent and 60 per cent respectively.
2
Attracting high-skilled immigrants
–like Africans –is considered a viable way to address labour market needs (Beckhusen, Florax
et al., 2013). However it can only do so if immigrants’skills are appropriately utilized in the
labour market, and this is not the case. Highly educated immigrants are more likely than the
native-born to be over-educated for their position (Matoo, Neagu et al., 2008; Chiswick and Miller,
2009; Beckhusen, Florax et al., 2013). That is, they are significantly more likely to have more
education than the average for their occupation. African immigrants have particularly high inci-
dences of over-education (Chiswick and Miller, 2009) and are the only black immigrants to be
over-educated for their jobs (Thomas, 2010). African immigrants even earn significantly lower
wages than Asian immigrants despite similar levels of educational attainment and over-education
rates (Reitz, 2007).
The wage disadvantage related to over-education is well established (Green, Kler et al., 2007;
Lindley, 2009; Beckhusen, Florax et al., 2013; Painter II, 2014), however no research investi-
gates its association with wages for African immigrants. Although a historically small sub-sec-
tion of immigrants (and blacks), African immigrants are now one of the fastest growing groups
in the United States. The African immigrant population approximately doubled every decade
between 1970 and 2010 (Capps, McCabe et al., 2012; Gambino, Trevelyan et al., 2014). Afri-
can immigrants’dramatic population increase provides a new opportunity to investigate the
ways in which race and nativity interact to affect the wage disadvantage associated with over-
education.
This study is the first to investigate the relationship between African immigrants’over-education
and wages. Specifically, I use U.S. census and American Community Survey (ACS) data from
1990 to 2010 to examine the following three questions: First, how does over-education influence
the wages of African immigrants in the U.S.? Second, does over-education have a larger impact on
African immigrants’wages than other race/immigrant groups? And finally, has the relationship
between African immigrants’over-education and wages changed over time?
BACKGROUND
Over-education is one of two forms of education-occupation mismatch. An employee is over-edu-
cated when they have a higher level of education than the average for the occupation in which they
are employed. The other form of education-occupation mismatch –under-education –happens
when an individual has a lower level of education than the average for their occupation (Kalfa and
Piracha, 2013). Under-education may occur among immigrants because they are positively selected
for migration in terms of motivation and ability (Feliciano, 2005). These characteristics may mean
that they interview well or have the interpersonal skills to move up the occupational ladder even
without credentials.
Immigrant selection increases with distance between home and host countries (Jasso and Rosen-
zweig, 2008; Matoo, Neagu et al., 2008). Therefore one would expect African immigrants to be
more highly selected than most other immigrants in the U.S., and have high rates of under-
204 Tesfai
©2017 The Author. International Migration ©2017 IOM
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