Skill mismatch among migrant workers: evidence from a large multi-country dataset
Identificadores
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12020/707ISSN: 2520-1786
DOI: 10.1186/s40176-015-0040-0
Fecha
2015-07-24Tipo de documento
articleMateria/s Unesco
5902.15 Política Social6109.04 Relaciones Trabajadores-Directivos
5802.07 Formación Profesional
Resumen
This article unravels the migrants’ incidence of skill mismatch taking into consideration
different migration flows. Mismatch is the situation in which workers have jobs for
which lower skill levels are required compared to their education. We use a dataset
(from a large multi-country web survey) particularly suited to investigate differences in
skill mismatch between native and migrant workers. The main advantages are its ample
size and the large variety of country of origin and destination combinations, which
allows for detailed analysis of different migration flows. This provides an innovative
multi-country perspective, including nations and migrants from all continents. We also
identify the relation between overeducation and some of the most widely accepted
theoretical explanations for the phenomenon among native workers and test whether
it holds for migrants. These results are achieved by fulfilling three research objectives,
which are to investigate (1) the factors affecting overeducation and whether migrants
are more often overqualified, (2) the relation between overeducation and different
country of origin and destination combinations, and (3) whether a range of theoretically
based assumptions affect the incidence of overeducation and the extent to which they
are relevant in the case of migrant workers. Skill mismatch is found to be more common
among migrants compared to native workers, although the incidence differs across
migrants depending on the country of residence. Differences in the incidence of
overeducation between native and migrant workers are not only related to the country
of residence but also to the combination of country of origin and destination. When
theoretically based assumptions are used to explain overeducation, the relation found
for the total population does not always hold in the case of migrants. All these findings
are confirmed by both an explorative and a in-depth analysis.