Regarding two work-related outcomes, employment and overqualification, the EU LFS Migration Module (2014 wave) provides evidence on self-reported obstacles. Following the legal analysis of gaps and barriers in previous chapters, we are in particular interested to see how TCNs perceive the role of ‘restricted rights’ and ‘recognition of qualifications’. In Figure 19, we compare responses of TCNs with those of mobile EU nationals to check whether indeed the perceived barriers are higher for the former.
attainment of TCNs: edat_lfs_9911 (Eurostat, 2018). We consider active population in the age between 25 and 55. Total number of TCNs as of 2016: 8.5 million. Educational attainment: 42.8%, low-skilled; 30.6%, medium-skilled; 26.6%, highly skilled.
Figure 19. Obstacles among overqualified and unemployed third-country nationals and mobile EU nationals in the EU labour markets
Source: Authors own calculations, 2018, using EU LFS, 2014 wave.
Note: Respondents are asked to identify the main obstacle to getting a job corresponding to their qualifications or to getting a job at all. The sample includes respondents aged 20-55 living in an EU Member State in the years of survey. TCNs are indeed more likely than mobile EU citizens to name ‘restricted rights’ as the main reason for being unemployed or overqualified for their job: 6.5% vs. 2.2% and 7.1% vs. 2.5% respectively. While ‘recognition of qualifications’ is not largely perceived as the main reason for unemployment, this barrier represents an important obstacle for TCNs to getting a job that matches their skills: 21% of overqualified TCNs name it as the main reason for being overqualified. To compare, ‘recognition of qualifications’ appears to be the major barrier for only 12% of mobile EU nationals.387 These results suggest that TCNs effectively face more barriers when trying to have their qualifications recognised in the EU. It requires, however, more research to investigate the roots of the barrier: first, difficulties with the recognition of qualifications in the EU for TCNs might result from the bureaucratic procedures and conditions for entry and residency inherent to specific national or EU migration status or a lack of information about the process; second, they may be due to imperfect transferability of human capital.
In addition, the EU LFS Ad-hoc Module on Migration (2008 wave) asked respondents ‘[w]hether [their] current legal access to the labour market is restricted’. We then link answers to this question to current work-related outcomes of TCNs.388 To reduce omitted variable bias, i.e. bias due to unobserved factors that influence both work-related outcomes and reported legal restrictions, we use a rich set of controls. In essence, we compare two TCNs of the same gender, age group, education, and who are coming for the same migration reason from the same origin and living in the same destination for the same number
387 The difference still remains statistically significant when we condition responses on gender, age and education of respondents.
388 The answer is counted as “Yes” if immigrants report that their access is a) restricted to employment for specific employers/sectors/occupations, b) restricted to self-employment, c) not allowing self-employment, d) falls under any combination of a, b and c.
of years, but one has a restricted legal access to the labour market whereas the other does not report any legal restrictions.
As Figure 20 shows, legal restrictions have important consequences, in particular, for women TCNs: those facing restrictions are 13.5 percentage points less likely to be employed and 11.7 percentage points less likely to have a permanent contract relative to women TCNs with the same observable characteristics but with unrestricted access. The likelihoods of part-time and atypical work also increase; however, they are not precisely estimated. The effect on the incidence of supervisory tasks can seem counter-intuitive, however, first, it is not statistically significant, and, second, it can also relate to the change in the composition of employed women TCNs: while additional restrictions may be decisive for lower-skilled women to not take a job, they are not likely to discourage higher-skilled women from pursuing well-paid jobs.
Results for men TCNs have an intuitive direction: legal restrictions on access to the labour market are associated with a 5.5 percentage point lower employment rate. Restrictions are also associated with a lower chance of having a permanent contract and with higher likelihoods of part-time and atypical work. Except for the effect on employment rate, the results, however, are imprecisely estimated. Such low precision is a combination of two factors: first, it is to be expected that restrictions on access to the labour market will be strongest at the employment stage; second, the measurement error of other work- related outcomes is larger than that of employment.
Figure 20. The role of self-reported legal restrictions for work-related outcomes of third-country nationals in the EU
Source: Authors own calculations, 2018, using EU LFS, 2008 wave.
Note: Statistically significant results are in boldface. The sample includes TCNs aged 20-55 living in an EU Member State in the years of survey. Numbers below column titles show the average of an outcome for TCNs in the sample. All reported differences are conditional on gender, age group, education, migration reason, destination* origin, destination* arrival year, origin* arrival year and interview year. Corresponding table: Annex 5: Table 32.
Although we can account for observable individual characteristics of TCNs as well as for the destination and origin time-specific effects, the results of this analysis can still suffer from the omitted variable bias and can be thus interpreted as an upper bound of the true effect’s magnitude.389
5.2.2 The causal impact of legal gaps and barriers for third-country nationals: the ‘EU experiment’