Is There a Double Penalty on Second Generation Immigrants' Job Quality? a Comparison Between France and the United States

The strong inequalities that affect the immigrant population represent a rising concern both in more societies like the French society, but also in multicultural societies like the American. These countries present two distinct models of integration, respectively a republican and a multiculturalist model and two sets of labor market institutions, a continental and a liberal set (Amable, 2005). Immigrants tend to occupy low-skilled and low-paid jobs, with poor job security and working conditions (Piore, 1979, Meurs, Pailhé, Simon, 2006). We can assume that this situation is mainly the result of characteristics acquired before the migration process. But what happens to their children, who are born, socialized and who attend school in host countries? Are they well integrated in the labor market?

During the 1980s the American literature developed analyses on the integration of these second generation immigrants on the labor market that underlined difficulties of integration on the labor market. More recently French researchers have also addressed this issue, by focusing on employment rates or payments. Since the literature has pointed out an occupational segregation for the immigrant population in low-paid and low-skilled jobs, with low working conditions and considerable insecurity, it seems crucial to consider a larger span of job characteristics. Comparative studies on job quality depict a heterogeneous job quality across OECD countries (OCDE, 2013; Schmitt, 2012) and across social groups. Women and unskilled workers have a lower job quality than others in OECD countries (Erhel et al., 2012); but only few studies on immigrant population can be found in the field of job quality.

This article proposes an analytical framework that compares job quality of second generation immigrants in France and in the United States. We empirically test for the existence of (1) an ethnic penalty for second generation immigrants (inequalities in terms of job quality between natives and immigrants’ descendants) and for (2) a double penalty for second generation immigrants women. Only a few studies (Meurs, Pailhé, 2008) deal with the specific question of the double penalty. As them, they are more educated than their male counterparts. They are also apparently less exposed to racism due to better stereotypes in host societies and should logically access easier to better jobs, but this seems not to be the case (Meurs, Pailhé, 2010).

The first result of this analysis is that children of immigrants have jobs of lower quality compared to natives’ children in both countries, other things being equal, with an important heterogeneity across origins in both countries. The ethnic penalty is nevertheless only significant in France, despite the absence of active measures to fight these inequalities in this country. This result may then support the hypothesis of a key role of institutions in the combat against ethnic-based inequalities. The penalty mainly concerns men (North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans). This article consequently refutes the hypothesis of a double penalty on second generation women job quality, while insisting on the fact that second generation women suffer from gender inequalities that are more important than the ethnic penalty.