We study the employment gap between immigrants and natives in 16 European countries and the effect of integration policies and country of origin. In this paper, we want to answer 3 main questions. First, is there employment gap between natives and immigrants? Using the European Social Survey, we found that employment gap exists for both male and female immigrants compare to natives because of their characteristics are different from natives. Second, how do various integration policies affect the employment probability of immigrants? Using Migration Integration Policy Index, the result shows that some integration policies are beneficial to immigrants but some are not. Lastly, how do various countries of origin characteristics affect the employment probability of immigrants? Using data from the World Bank and the United Nation Development Program, we found that Human development index and labor force participation rate of the origin country affects immigrants in positive effects of probability of being employed.

Immigration to Sweden has increased in recent decades with low employment records of foreign-born, especially among females. It is a political challenge to integrate immigrants into the labour market and in the ongoing debate, an integration factor that has been put forward is immigrant’s adaption of the majority identity in the host country. Using data from the European Social Survey, this thesis investigates the female native-immigrant employment gap in Sweden and contributes to the debate about the relationship between ethnic identity and labour market-outcomes. The results indicate that it exists an interethnic employment gap and being an immigrant leads to an employment penalty of 10%. Further, ethnic identity is negatively correlated with employment probabilities. Having a strong identity being an immigrant decreases the probability of employment by 6%.

International migration has had a steady growth over the last decades and the integration of immigrants into the labour market is a challenge for many countries. Previous literature has found that immigrants, especially non-European immigrants, are disadvantaged in the labour market, and that the size of this disadvantage differs between male and female immigrants. One potential explanation for non-European immigrants’ labour market disadvantage is discrimination, which can be expressed through negative attitudes towards immigrants. Using individual data from the European Social Survey, this paper investigates whether there is a relation between negative attitudes towards immigrants and the employment gap between non-European immigrants and natives in Sweden, and whether this relation differs by gender. The results, however not statistically significant, indicate that there is a negative relation between negative attitudes towards immigrants and the immigrant-native employment gap. Moreover, the female immigrant-native employment gap is found to be more negatively affected by negative attitudes towards immigrants.

How did the Italian mafia affect honest Italian descendants on the American labor market? This is a study about how an exogenous shock to ethnic discrimination on the labor market affected a whole ethnic group. The goal with this study is to analyze how a massacre by Al Capone’s crew in 1929 affected Italian workers on the American labor market. Using linked census-data of all working-age men 1920-30, this paper studies the ethnic discrimination of second-generation Italian immigrants. The treatment group is Italian men, and the control groups are other immigrants and natives. Three different outcome variables will be used, employment, wage employment, and self-employment. The results suggest that Italians saw lower chances of being employed, lower chances of being wage employed, and higher chances of being self-employed post 1930 compared to other immigrants and natives. This suggest that Italians were forced into self-employment. A conclusion that the ethnic discrimination towards Italians is a result of the tragic massacre cannot be made due to no data on the news distribution. The news distribution system in America could give an indication on how the news were shown in surrounding areas and this could therefore reflect the employers’ attitudes towards Italians. Further studies are therefore required in order to conclude if the massacre gave Italians a harder time on the labor market or not but for now, we have an indication on that Italians were more affected post 1930 compared to other immigrants and natives.

Sweden has once been an emigration country, but as the years went by and as the world is in constant change, it turned into an immigration country. One of the most debated questions politically and economically is the employment gap between immigrants and natives. The available studies have mainly described the employment gap between immigrants and natives by human capital factors and discrimination on the labour market. The goal of this paper is to discover the correlation between the local factors and the employment gap between European, non-European immigrants and natives, on municipality level while controlling for education level and gender. Using data from Statistics Sweden and SKR, and an OLS multiple linear regression, we could capture this effect. The local factors studied are the unemployment rate, share of immigrants, share of low-skilled jobs and the size of the municipality. The overall results suggest that the region of birth does have an impact on the employment gap between immigrants and natives, where the biggest gap is between the non-European immigrants and the natives, which is in line with previous studies. Furthermore, both Europeans’ and non-Europeans’ employment rate is mostly correlated with the municipality size followed by the local unemployment rate. Taking the limitations of this paper into account, these results are only an indication and further studies need to be made to further insure the correlation between the local factors and the employment rate.