Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Migrant’s path to employment is conditioned by broad institutional factors and by the policies and regulations the state has in place. I argue that one of these factors are immigration policies. They are the gatekeepers, with an important role in setting the conditions under which immigrants enter a country, whether legally or illegally, the conditions of their stay, as well as the type of employment they can take up once in the country. There are three main dimensions of the national immigration policies which I analyse, namely, admission policies, access to labour market and assistance to integration.

 Starting from the comparative capitalism literature, which states that socio-economic regime variation can explain variation across countries, and looking at the EU-15, I will argue that variation in immigration policies across states helps explain variation in migrants’ labour market integration across. Integration is defined in terms of employment, self-employment and unemployment rates. The analysis will use an index of the above typologies which categorize the EU-15 countries along a continuum of restrictiveness, assistance and access, to test the effect of migration policies on integration.