Findings from social tourism research on low-income groups have shown that social tourism holds several psychological benefits for participants (e.g. Minnaert, Maitland, and Miller, 2009; McCabe and Johnson, 2013). On the other hand, the evidence base about any direct linkages between these individual benefits, and social and economic benefits, remains weak, affecting the promotion of social tourism in the UK policy agenda. In line with the recent debate on social tourism in the country (see All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Tourism, 2011), the current socioeconomic trends, and more specifically the high rates of general and long-term unemployment (Eurostat, 2013; ONS, 2013b), and the consequences of unemployment for individuals, their families, and the society, this study sets to explore whether social tourism holds any particular psychological benefits for unemployed individuals in Great Britain, and the extent to which, such benefits have, in turn, positive effects on their job-search behaviour (JSB). Drawing upon findings from social tourism studies on low-income groups, psychology studies on unemployment and job-search behaviour, and social psychology theories with specific reference to Bandura’s (1986, 1997) social cognitive theory, this study examines the psychological benefits of tourism participation within the context of self-efficacy beliefs. Self-efficacy (SE) is the main construct of social cognitive theory, and it has been found to play a central role in unemployed individuals’ JSB. Utilising a mixed methods approach to data collection and analysis, the study incorporates a pre- post-test non-experimental design (n=57) and semi-structured interviews (n=13), with the aim to investigate any such effects over time, and to understand how they are manifested. Access to the rare target population, became possible through the database of the Family Holiday Association, the main provider of social tourism for low-income families in the UK. Results showed that the holiday-break had positive effects on participants’ SE, which, in turn, had positive effects on their JSB. In addition, the holiday-break was found to have direct effects on participants’ JSB, as it was perceived as an incentive towards employment. On the other hand, such positive effects, and especially with regard to JSB, were not universal among unemployed individuals, mainly due to existing restrictions to work, such as caring responsibilities. This non-effect was counterbalanced by identified positive effects of the holiday-break on participants’ behaviours towards alternative paths to employment (BAPE), such as, volunteering. Overall, findings confirmed the central role of enabling environments in positive mental health, and offered some “tangible” evidence about direct linkages between individual psychological benefits that social tourism holds for participants, and socioeconomic benefits, thus, giving a new insight into the debate on social tourism in the UK, and providing important implications for policy. Given that “active” labour market programmes in the UK have largely overlooked job-seekers positive mental health (see Dolton and O’Neil, 2002; Kluve, 2010), it is suggested that social tourism, if properly tailored and positioned, could be embedded into existing unemployment schemes, helping them to increase their effectiveness.

This thesis discusses the changes and corresponding causes of the wage distribution in China from the late 1990s to the 2000s. According to various data sources, real wage inequality in China has been increasing over time. People have become increasingly concerned about such a phenomenon, which can potentially cause economic instability and further social unrest. From the analysis of household survey data, a significant part of the the increase in wage dispersion in China can be attributed to changes in the institutional changes. Having gone through the institutional reform of state-owned enterprises in the late 1990s, many Chinese firms have become more privatized and smaller in size. That is to say, the Chinese labour market becomes less affected by the government intervention (through public enterprises). Changes in the supply side of the labour market have also been examined. The increase in the number of university graduates slows down the growing wage dispersion. A comparison between the household survey data and the industrial enterprises data tells a slightly different story about Chinas wage structure. As the firm-level data omits within-firm wage inequalities and excludes data of primary sectors, the service sectors, and the small businesses, a decrease in the logarithm of the wage variation has been found. The inconsistency between the changes of real wage dispersion and the dispersion of log wages has been discussed in depth in the thesis. Nonetheless, since China set the new minimum wage in 2004, the wage distribution in the countrys industrial sector has been reshaped, which is not obviously shown in the household data. The impact of increasing the national minimum wage has been evaluated under a set of relatively conservative assumptions. Further analysis has been conducted to quantify the effect of trade liberalization on wage dispersion. It turns out that starting to export on the part of the firms has a significant positive effect on firm-level wages and employments, but the impact of an increasing export exposure remains debatable.

Not only is there an increase in the use of contract workers in some of today's workplaces, but a qualitative shift has also taken place in the nature of labour contracting, as the operation of labour intermediaries has expanded from peripheral services to the main production activities of companies. This new phenomenon implies the greater integration of labour contracting into the production process, together with changes in employment practices and the rights of workers. This thesis aims to better understand how the changing nature of labour contracting affects employment relationships by undertaking an empirical investigation of in-house contracting arrangements in the South Korean automobile industry. In so doing, it examines roles and relationships between workplace actors involved in labour contracting; namely, user firm management, contractors, labour organisations, user firm employees, contract workers and the state. This analysis sheds light on the process of change in labour contracting and the consequences of increased labour contracting in the workplace. The thesis argues that the coordination of workplace changes brought about by increased flexibility attained through the use of contract workers is fraught with tension, which influences the ways in which employment relationships are shaped in the context of any particular firm. The essence of such tension lies in the pursuit of organisational flexibility and quality control in the production process, both of which are considered to be necessary to ensuring the performance of firms. Contradictions arise from the attempts of user firms to avoid employment-related responsibility for the labour force, while at the same time exerting managerial control over contract workers. Such tensions and paradoxes are associated with conflicts of interest, and compromise between and within workplace actors. A case study of the Korean automobile industry is provided that explores the contradictory nature of the labour contracting system, as contract workers with fewer employment entitlements are brought into core production processes; and investigates the manner in which inherent tensions play out in shaping employment relationships and the orientation of labour contracting practices. The findings of this thesis could help in the further understanding of the implications of change in labour contracting practices, and contribute to overcoming the current limits of thinking with regard to labour flexibility and employment relationships in the context of in-house contracting.

This thesis consists of three theoretical chapters, all related to the response of unemployment to shocks and the role of active and passive labour market policies. Throughout the thesis, unemployment is assumed to evolve as a result of the uncoordinated nature of the labour market along the lines outlined in the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides equilibrium search and matching model. Chapter 2 examines the effects of employment policies on vacancy creation and allocation decisions of firms and unemployment across workers with different skills. We develop a partial equilibrium model with heterogeneous high- and low-tech jobs and with skilled and unskilled workers, which we motivate by the stark evidence on the incidence of cross-skill employment (which crowds out unskilled workers, e.g. evidence for the US, the UK and the EU put these at 58%, 32%, and 35%, respectively). We show that certain employment protection policies could, in fact, lead to a reduction in job creation and might alter the allocation of vacancies across low- and high-tech job type. We find that: (i) skilled workers benefit while unskilled workers experience high jobless rate; (ii) policy effects differ when they are skill-specific; (ii) stricter policies can have more severe consequences; and (iv) vacancy creation subsidy can play a key role in reducing unemployment across worker type as well as alleviating the cross-skill crowding out of jobs. Against conventional wisdom, we demonstrate that severance compensation can have a ‘real’ effect on job creation decision, provided there is some degree of strictness in its enforcement. Motivated by the extensive use of fiscal stimulus policies and labour market reforms during the last economic crisis, in Chapter 3 we study the implications of labour market regulations in driving the sensitivity of an economy to fiscal spending shocks, in a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model with job search frictions. We demonstrate that less rigidity in the labour market reduces the impact of fiscal demand shock on job creation and employment, both at extensive and intensive margins, whereas higher rigidity amplifies it. We also establish that the extent to which government spending promotes economic activity, job creation and employment depends on the degree of substitutability between private and public consumption. Higher substitutability dampens economic activity and reduces the sizes of output and employment multipliers. Labour market-oriented fiscal spending is found to be the most potent policy instruments for promoting employment – especially in the presence of high labour market rigidities. Finally, in Chapter 4, we study how openness to international trade and capital mobility and their interactions with labour market policies affect the behaviour of an economy, in particular with respect to its unemployment level. We show that the degree of openness to international capital flow is crucial for understanding the response of unemployment to different shocks. In isolation, by raising the incentive to invest, a reduction in capital mobility barriers leads to lower unemployment, both in the long-run and the dynamic short-run. With limited restrictions to capital movement, unemployment responds faster and with greater magnitude to a domestic productivity shock, and this is further enhanced the more the economy is open to international trade. A striking finding of this study is that while a higher degree of capital mobility enhances the adjustment of unemployment in response to a domestic productivity shock, it dampens its adjustment to a foreign demand shock. By contrast, higher openness to international trade enhances the adjustment effects of both shocks on unemployment. Finally, we find that heterogeneity in the welfare state systems in the EU can generate substantial differentials in the adjustment of unemployment to various shocks.

This thesis examine three distinct aspects of the labour market integration of immigrants and their children in the host country. The first chapter looks at the early careers of immigrants to shed light on the mechanisms driving the immigrant wage growth in the first years in the host country. I use a unique linked employer employee panel covering all wage earners in the private sector in Portugal to follow the careers of immigrant men. I show that in the first ten years in the country immigrants close one third of the initial immigrant-native wage gap and that one third of this wage catch-up is accounted for by immigrants gaining access to better paying firms. I then suggest an economic assimilation mechanism which highlights imperfect information about immigrant productivity and show that its predictions are in line with the data. The second chapter offers a longer term perspective of the economic assimilation of immigrants by turning to the labour market performance of the second generation. The chapter uses a unique survey of children of immigrants from Turkey, Morocco and ex-Yugoslavia, and children of natives in 15 European cities to closely compare their educational and labor market outcomes. Although the second generation performs on average worse than the children of natives in most outcomes considered, all differences are explained by differences in socio-economic background. While the first chapter focused on the dynamics of the wage gap over time, the third chapter studies the differences in the level of the wage gap across immigrant populations. The chapter provides a comparison of the wage gaps by country of origin in two major host countries, the UK and the US, in order to disentangle country of origin effects from immigrant selection. I show that the wage gaps by country of origin are strongly correlated in the two host countries and that virtually all the correlation is accounted for by differences in country of origin specific returns to education.

This thesis examines the qualitative transformation taking place within the processes of transnationalisation of labour markets that drive a substantive increase in the segmentation and fragmentation of migrant labour. The thesis argues that by either focusing on the agential elements or strictly structural constraints, conventional perspectives on the role of intermediaries in processes of international migration lack a comprehensive transnational theorisation of labour markets. A focus on the transnationalisation of labour markets through the role of cross-border farm labour contractors aims to address these limitations by analysing the complex nature of processes of transnationalisation in the provision of migrant labour in Californian agriculture. A transnational labour market approach is developed to show how three regimes of segmentation-fragmentation operate at the Federal (nation-state) and state (regional) levels and also at a local level through the actions of farm labour contractors in the organisation of movement and workplace practices along formal and informal lines. The core argument of this thesis is that the tensions between fragmentation and segmentation within the process of transnationalisation of labour markets between Mexico and the United States conflate in everyday precarity for migrant workers. Everyday precarity involves not only the conditions under which migrant workers perform their activities in the workplace, but also extends beyond to include aspects of their everyday lives in a transnational fashion. Farm labour contractors play an important role in organising and coordinating flexibility in fragmented agricultural labour markets. Through their position at the heart of the tensions of the interplay between the three regimes, farm labour contractors gain power over the labour process, thereby contributing to further fragmentation. This power is linked to the migration and protection policies established by nation-states at the first regime of segmentation-fragmentation, and is also shaped by the regional (Californian) labour legislation at the second regime of segmentation-fragmentation. The thesis concludes that a transnational theorisation of labour markets, which places intermediaries such as farm labour contractors within the tensions of processes of transnationalisation that account for not only segmentation but also fragmentation, is required to fully understand everyday precarity beyond national boundaries. Therefore, farm labour contractors are key channels of transnationalisation by contributing to further fragmentation at the local level in already highly segmented labour markets.

This thesis consists of three substantial chapters on topics related to occupational and industrial mobility. Using quarterly data of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) from 1992 to 2013, Chapter 2 documents the mobility across occupations and industries (referred to as career change). The findings suggest that occupational and industrial mobility are surprisingly high. Both occupational and industrial mobility are procyclical. The majority of instances of career change are associated with wage growth. During an expansion, a career changer's wage grows more than someone who stays in their career. However, this does not apply if the career changer was unemployed and then hired during a recession. The evidence suggests that career mobility during a business cycle is important for understanding the labour market flows and wage growth. The use of interviewing method may affect the accuracy of the data. The dependent interviewing is introduced in the survey, and is helpful in reducing the measurement errors. Chapter 3 uses data from British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS) to examine the robustness of the results obtained by using LFS. The procyclicality of occupational and industrial mobility are reassured when the change of interviewing method is controlled for. The further detailed occupational and industrial classification is applied, and the pro-cyclicality of occupational and industrial mobility is found in the further detailing of classifications. Given the solid evidence found in Chaper 2 and 3, Chapter 4 develops a theoretical model to understand the mechanism of workers' reallocation. Aggregate productivity shock, sectoral productivity shock and preference shock are included in order to investigate reallocation through business cycle, net mobility and gross mobility respectively. This model shows the procyclicality of gross mobility between sectors, which is consistent with the findings in Chapter 2 and 3. This chapter also explains the higher level of unemployment during recession. This thesis undertakes a comprehensive analysis of the occupational and industrial mobility in the UK using both empirical and theoretical methods. Limitations of this thesis and suggestions for future research are provided.

In this study, I utilise a race-based methodology through the lens of critical race theory, to interrogate the lived experiences of highly skilled visible minorities who are recently "landed"1 immigrants to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I also employ critical discourse analysis to scrutinise the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) 2001 in its many guises to expose and challenge the hidden ideology behind its language, and text. This study highlights the interface of skilled immigration, racialisation, foreign education and economic integration. The argument is made that systematic discrimination rooted in historical and structural perception of visible minorities2 as the “Other”, and the normativation of racialisation (past and present), is a contributory factor in employers’, institutions and licensing associations’ devaluation of foreign credential and international work experiences. During this qualitative race based research, I undertook several in-depth semi structured interviews of highly skilled visible minority immigrants. A combined narrative/life history inquiry approach shaped the resultant data gathering and enables the voices of the participants to be heard. The life history approach allowed the study participants to discuss not only themselves, and their lives, but also the social, economic and political spaces that they inhabit, thus communicate how structure and agency intersect to produce the circumstances of their lives. This study uses life history narratives to map their migratory and immigration process before, during and after their arrival in Canada. The Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) of Canada is based on the embodied human capital of migrants. Canada actively recruits immigrants with the rhetoric that Canada needs their skills. Over half of Canada’s annual immigrants enter as Highly Skilled through the Economic Classes Part Six Regulation of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act 2001. Many immigrants, particularly visible minorities, find their skills, education and prior professional experiences undervalued. Upon arrival, these immigrants encounter a variety of credential assessments and qualifying examinations; these are varied depending on the province they have chosen to call their new home. Frequently, these skilled immigrants find that access to professions and trades are barred through unregulated licensing and registration requirement, institutional biases, perceived fluency of language as well as the subjective and oft requested but elusive, ‘Canadian experience’. The work documents and examines the institutional, political, ideological, social and economic obstacles encountered by the research participants through the implementation of the Federal Skilled Workers program, and how they have had to adapt to the circumstance they find themselves in. The study agrees with Gillborn, (2005), that " the most dangerous form of 'white supremacy' is not the obvious and extreme fascistic posturing of small neo-Nazi groups, but rather the implicit routine privileging of white interests that goes unremarked in the political mainstream" (p.485). This research also makes uses of critical discourse analysis to dissect policy rhetoric and jargon. Its aim is to discover the truth behind Canada’s expansive, supposedly colour-blind, meritocratic skilled immigration policy, bolstered by participants’ own words as spoken. The study offers a number of suggestions to overcome/mitigate these barriers in general and for visible minorities in particular.

This thesis contributes to the existing literature by studying the link between educational choices, skill mismatch and wages in a labour market with search frictions with on-the-job search. In the first paper, I used empirical techniques to look at the link between skill mismatch and wages. I found that over-education and mismatch is part of a career mobility or job-to-job transition in the labour market. Workers accept jobs for which they are overqualified and search on-the-job to move to jobs that are more matched to their educational level. In the process they accept a wage cut which is temporary until they are able to find a job better suited to their level of education. In the second paper, I used search and matching framework to study the link between on-the-job search and wages in an economy where high and low ability workers compete for jobs. On-the-job search is a way in which workers reduce the extent of mismatch and firms react to this. However, this interaction implies that when more workers try to relocate the friction in the market reduces the efficiency of resource allocation (by increasing mismatch) and it also creates more wage inequality between the different types of workers. Finally in the third paper, I looked at the link between educational choices, and skill mismatch in a labour market with search frictions. I found that fewer search frictions lead to higher inequality in wages. If the cost of education is low enough, more individuals choose to acquire education and get trained. As a consequence mismatch increases.

This thesis investigates socio-economic integration of men and women immigrants (‘Old’ and ‘New’) relative to United Kingdom (UK) born White in the UK labour market. In order to assess my research hypotheses I use both cross-sectional and panel data based on the world’s largest panel survey: UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), (data collected between 2009 and 2014). The first two essays are cross-sectional studies examining access (or lack of access) to the professional class and pay asymmetry of these groups, while, the third paper, uses the full potential attributes of a ‘strict balanced’ panel to investigate occupational status transitions and earning trajectories using a more refined parsimonious random effects model approach. The main findings show that the labour market performance of immigrants differs from that of UK born White in several important ways. The education and experience of immigrants are subject to different ‘rewards’ to those of natives, and immigrants will usually end up in jobs that are a poor match for their education. These findings are in line with the results of the literature in this field. The main contributions of this thesis are twofold: substantively, the thesis addresses and explores the heterogeneity in the groups studied in terms of observable and unobservable characteristics. Also, this study is among the pioneering research being conducted with the re-scaling of complex survey weights associated with the UKHLS.