Hiromi Yumoto (p), Matt Cole, Liza Jabbour, Ceren Ozgen

Oskar Jost

In response to a lack of evidence on the factors that influence the integration of refugees within Europe, we use rich micro-data on refugees who arrived and gained an asylum residence permit in the Netherlands between 2014 and 2020 to analyse the factors that hindered or facilitated legal integration. We benefit from the quasi-random allocation of refugees within the Netherlands which allows us to explore the role played by locational characteristics, and use two measures of legal integration, first whether or not an individual passed the civic integration exam and second, whether full naturalisation occurred. We find that a number of factors reduce the likelihood of both forms of integration, including mental or physical health difficulties and a lengthy asylum application process. The likelihood of gaining full naturalisation is further reduced by the duration of time on social benefits and the unemployment rate of the residential municipality. In contrast, both forms of legal integration are positively associated with being in employment, being educated within the Netherlands and, to an extent, the level of urbanisation of the municipality. Our findings withstand a number of robustness exercises.

Vassilis Monastiriotis (p), Stylianos Sakkas

Hiromi Yumoto

Does employment flexibility facilitate cross-regional adjustments via the inter-regional migration of labour (labour mobility)? Or does it instead constitute a hinderance to inter-regional migration (and thus also to cross-regional equilibration in the labour market)? We examine this, drawing on a sample of 11 European countries (10 European Union countries plus the UK) belonging to different ‘varieties’ of European capitalism. We identify two opposing potential effects of employment flexibility on out-migration (a negative necessitating effect, linked to flexibility as a demand-side factor; and a positive facilitating effect, linked to flexibility as a supply-side factor) and provide original evidence on the ways in which employment flexibility impacts of the responsiveness of inter-regional out-migration to regional unemployment. We find that employment flexibility is at large associated with less cross-regional adjustability. This is especially so for numerical aspects of flexibility (non-standard forms of employment contracts) and more true for countries in the European south and Scandinavia; while for internal aspects of employment flexibility (irregular hours and patterns of work), as well as for countries of the Continental ‘variety’ (coordinated market economies), employment flexibility appears to be more synergetic to cross-regional adjustability (via outimigration). We draw implications for our understanding of cross-regional equilibration and for labour market and wider EU policies.

Oskar Jost (p), Ramona Jost, Yige Duan

Vassilis Monastiriotis

We study the long-term impact of job displacement on workers’ commuting behavior.
Our measures of commuting exploit geo-coordinates of workers’ places of
residents and places of work, from which we calculate the door-to-door commuting
distance and commuting time. Using German employee-employer matched data and
an event study design, we identify the causal effect of job loss on workers displaced
during a mass layoff. Conditional on finding a new job, workers’ commuting distance
and commuting time rise sharply after displacement and gradually decline in subsequent
years. The recovery is due to employer changes rather than migration, and a
larger increase in commuting would mitigate the wage loss due to job displacement.
To rationalize our findings, we build an on-the-job search model with heterogeneous
firm productivity and commuting distances. Our model predicts a joint recovery of
wages and commuting despite a static tradeoff between the two attributes.
Keywords: commuting, mobility, displacement, job search.