Migrants’ Integration on the European Labor Market: A Spatial Bootstrap, SEM and Network Approach

Abstract

This study is set out to identify feasible ways for immigrants’ integration into the major ten host countries within the European Union (EU-10) and increased labor market performance. Eurostat, OECD, and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) official data was mainly used to capture essential international migration indicators (for both dimensions—economic and humanitarian), along with education, socio-economic development and labor market credentials, as key variables for immigrants’ integration into EU-10, compiled for 2000–2017. In this respect, spatial analyses, bootstrap estimations, structural equations (SEM), and Gaussian graphical models (GGM) are applied, to better grasp migrants’ labor market outcomes. Significant positive consequences reflected through a reduction in the unemployment rate of the foreign population are generated by active labor market policies, jointly with an enhancement in the attainment for secondary education, and welfare advances. The opposite, a rise in income inequalities has negative effects, while additional support for R&D activities deployed within the business sector is required to entail migrants’ labor market performance. The passive policies need to be redesigned and tailored to significantly downsize the foreign unemployment, since these are currently acting like a disincentive for an active participation of migrants on the European labor market, thus confining their integration.