Multilevel Comparative Analysis of the Immigrant Gap in the Incidence of Job-Skill Mismatch among the Highly Skilled Working Population

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The main research questions of this project are to what extent and why highly skilled immigrant workers (i.e. foreign-born citizens who immigrated as adults and are educated to tertiary level) face a higher incidence of job-skill mismatches than highly skilled national workers across European countries, even after a period of adaptation to the labour market of the destination country. Job-skill mismatch refers to the situation where workers are overeducated or undereducated for the occupation they pursue. Individuals are characterized as overeducated (or undereducated) if their years of education are more than one standard deviation above (or below) the mean education level for their occupation. Overeducation is the most likely pattern of job-skill mismatch faced by highly skilled workers. These research questions will be investigated by means of the available national and cross-national secondary survey data of immigrants and nationals, such as the EU Labour Force Survey with its 2014 migration Ad Hoc Module available for 26 European countries. This project will use comparative approaches at the micro, meso and macro levels. At the micro level, it will follow a theoretical human capital approach and investigate variations in the immigrant gap in the incidence of job-skill mismatch in relation to various individual characteristics such as the country of origin, entry category and legal (immigrant) status of highly skilled immigrants. At the meso level, the project will analyse differences between labour market sectors in respect of the incidence of immigrant penalties related to job-skill mismatches. At the macro level, the differences in the incidence of job-skill mismatches between highly skilled immigrants and highly skilled nationals across 26 European destination countries will be analysed. The project aims to assess the extent to which differences in immigrant penalties arising from job-skill mismatches of the highly skilled working population in these destination countries are related to differences in labour market characteristics and regulation, differences in policies targeting immigrants and highly skilled workers, and differences in societal openness towards immigrants. Most (mainly Western) European countries have been striving to attract highly skilled immigrants to fill their skilled labour shortage, which has led to a higher proportion of highly skilled individuals among the immigrant population. The underutilization of the expertise of highly skilled immigrants constitutes a problem not only for the highly skilled immigrants themselves, but also for the destination countries, as they are likely to waste skills despite the demand for skills in their labour market. A better understanding of the micro, meso and macro factors which foster and hamper the labour market integration of highly skilled immigrants would therefore be very valuable, not only for the international scientific community but also for the European public debate.