This article analyses the conditions under which employers grant immigrants access to jobs corresponding to their foreign education. It is often observed that employers prefer native-educated employees and devalue foreign education. We argue that part of this devaluation is due to institutional differences in education systems. Nevertheless, hiring foreign-educated immigrants is becoming a viable strategy for employers given the substantial shortage of skilled labour and the significant influx of skilled immigrants. Using a factorial survey, we simulate a hiring process and present a series of hypothetical foreign applicants to employers in Germany. Our findings show that the transferability of foreign qualifications strongly depends on the institutional characteristics of foreign education systems. However, employers are willing to accept differences in education because they consider institutional differences a trade-off against other dimensions, such as relevant foreign work experience.
AignerDJCainGG (1977) Statistical theories of discrimination in labor markets. Industrial and Labor Relations Review30(2): 175–187.
2.
AllmendingerJ (1989) Educational systems and labor market outcomes. European Sociological Review5(3): 231–250.
3.
ArbeitCAWarrenJR (2013) Labor market penalties for foreign degrees among college educated immigrants. Social Science Research42(3): 852–871.
4.
AuerDBonoliGFossatiFLiechtiF (2018) The matching hierarchies model: evidence from a survey experiment on employers’ hiring intent regarding immigrant applicants. International Migration Review. Epub ahead of print 1 May. DOI: 10.1177/0197918318764872.
BanerjeeA (1992) A simple model of herd behaviour. Quarterly Journal of Economics107(3): 797–817.
7.
BaruchYHoltomBC (2008) Survey response rate levels and trends in organizational research. Human Relations61(8): 1139–1160.
8.
BillsDB (1992) The mutability of educational credentials as hiring criteria: how employers evaluate atypically highly credentialed job candidates. Work and Occupations19(1): 79–95.
9.
BillsDBDi StasioVGerxhaniK (2017) The demand side of hiring: employers in the labor market. Annual Review of Sociology43(1): 291–310.
10.
BlossfeldH-P (1992) Is the German dual system a model for a modern vocational training system? A cross national comparison of how different systems of vocational training deal with the changing occupational structure. International Journal of Comparative Sociology33(3–4): 168–181.
11.
BreenR (2005) Explaining cross-national variation in youth unemployment: market and institutional factors. European Sociological Review21(2): 125–134.
12.
BrückerHHauptmannASirriesS (2017) Zuzüge nach Deutschland. Aktuelle Berichte des Instituts für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung 01/2017. Nuremberg: Institute for Employment Research (IAB). Available at: http://doku.iab.de/aktuell/2017/aktueller_bericht_1701.pdf (accessed 20 March 2017).
13.
CartwrightSCooperCL (eds) (2008) The Oxford Handbook of Personnel Psychology, Part II: Personnel Selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
14.
ChiswickBRMillerPW (2009) The international transferability of immigrants’ human capital skills. Economics of Education Review28(2): 162–169.
15.
ColeMSRubinRSFeildHSGilesWF (2007) Recruiters’ perceptions and use of applicant résumé information: screening the recent graduate. Applied Psychology56(2): 319–343.
16.
DamelangAAbrahamM (2016) You can take some of it with you! A vignette study on the acceptance of foreign vocational certificates and ethnic inequality in the German labor market. Zeitschrift für Soziologie45(2): 91–106.
17.
Di StasioV (2014) Education as a signal of trainability: results from a vignette study with Italian employers. European Sociological Review30(6): 796–809.
18.
Di StasioVVan de WerfhorstHG (2016) Why does education matter to employers in different institutional contexts? A vignette study in England and the Netherlands. Social Forces95(1): 77–106.
19.
DiehlCLubbersMMühlauPPlattL (2016) Starting out: new migrants’ socio-cultural integration trajectories in four European destinations. Ethnicities16(2): 157–179.
20.
DiPreteTEllerCCBolTVan de WerfhorstHG (2017) School-to-work linkages in the United States, Germany, and France. American Journal of Sociology122(6): 1869–1938.
21.
EbnerCHelblingM (2016) Social distance and wage inequalities for immigrants in Switzerland. Work, Employment and Society30(3): 436–454.
22.
European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) (2009) Continuity, Consolidation and Change: Towards a European Era of Vocational Education and Training. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.
23.
European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) (2018) Briefing Note: Qualifications Frameworks in Europe 2017 Developments. Available at: http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/files/9127_en.pdf (accessed 26 February 2018).
24.
FelliniIFerroAFullinG (2007) Recruitment processes and labour mobility: the construction industry in Europe. Work, Employment and Society21(2): 277–398.
HainmüllerJHangartnerDYamamotoT (2015) Validating vignette and conjoint survey experiments against real-world behavior. Proceedings of the Nation Academy of Sciences112(8): 2395–2400.
27.
HarrisLCOgbonnaE (2016) Ethnic gatekeeping on the shopfloor: a study of bases, motives and approaches. Work, Employment and Society30(1): 59–76.
28.
JannB (2014) Plotting regression coefficients and other estimates. The Stata Journal14(4): 708–737.
29.
KanasAVan TubergenF (2009) The impact of origin and host country schooling on the economic performance of immigrants. Social Forces88(2): 893–916.
30.
KoganI (2006) Labor markets and economic incorporation among recent immigrants in Europe. Social Forces85(2): 697–721.
31.
KoganI (2011) New immigrants – old disadvantage patterns? Labour market integration of recent immigrants into Germany. International Migration49(1): 91–117.
32.
KreyenfeldMKonietzkaD (2002) The performance of migrants in occupational labour markets. European Societies4(1): 53–78.
33.
KulkarniMLengnick-HallMLMartinezPG (2015) Overqualification, mismatched qualification, and hiring decisions: perceptions of employers. Personnel Review44(4): 529–549.
34.
LanceeB (2016) The negative side effects of vocational education: a cross-national analysis of the relative unemployment risk of young non-Western immigrants in Europe. American Behavioral Scientist60(5–6): 659–679.
35.
MacKenzieRFordeC (2009) The rhetoric of the ‘good worker’ versus the realities of employers’ use and the experience of migrant workers. Work, Employment and Society23(1): 142–159.
36.
MarsdenD (2000) A theory of job regulation, the employment relationship, and the organization of labour institutions. Industrielle Beziehungen7(4): 320–347.
37.
MauriceMSellierFSilvestreJ-J (1986) The Social Foundations of Industrial Power: A Comparison of France and Germany. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
38.
Oberholzer-GeeF (2008) Nonemployment stigma as rational herding: a field experiment. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization65(1): 642–669.
39.
OECD (2013) PISA 2012 Results: What Makes Schools Successful? Resources, Policies and Practices (Volume IV). Paris: OECD Publishing. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264201156-7-en (accessed 2 August 2017).
40.
OECD (2018) International Migration Outlook 2018. Paris: OECD Publishing.
41.
PhelpsES (1972) The statistical theory of racism and sexism. American Economic Review62(4): 659–661.
42.
ProtschPSolgaH (2017) Going across Europe for an apprenticeship? A factorial survey experiment on employers’ hiring preferences in Germany. Journal of European Social Policy27(4): 387–399.
43.
RyanP (2003) Evaluating vocationalism. European Journal of Education38(2): 147–162.
44.
SeibertHWaplerR (2015) Die Qualifikationsstruktur der Zuwanderer. Aktuelle Daten und Indikatoren des Instituts für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung Januar 2015. Nuremberg: Institute for Employment Research (IAB). Available at: http://doku.iab.de/arbeitsmarktdaten/QualiZuwa.pdf (accessed 20 March 2017).
45.
ShenKKuhnP (2013) Do Chinese employers avoid hiring overqualified workers? Evidence from an internet job board. In: CorradoGKonstantinosTZimmermannKF (eds) Labor Market Issues in China (Research in Labor Economics), vol. 37. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 1–30.
46.
SolgaHKonietzkaD (1999) Occupational matching and social stratification. Theoretical insights and empirical observations taken from a German-German comparison. European Sociological Review15(1): 25–47.
47.
ThelenK (2004) How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
48.
TopelR (1999) Labour markets and economic growth. In: AshenfelterOCardD (eds) Handbook of Labour Economics, vol. 3. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2943–2984.
49.
VerhaestDBogaertiEDereymaekerJMestdaghLBaertS (2016) Crowding out in the labour market: do employers lend a hand? IZA Discussion Paper 9654. Bonn: Institute of Labor Economics.
50.
VollmerM (2015) Determining labour shortages and the need for labour migration in Germany. Working Paper of the Research Centre of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees 64. Nuremberg: Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF).
51.
WallanderL (2009) 25 years of factorial surveys in sociology: a review. Social Science Research38(3): 505–520.
52.
WilliamsR (2012) Using the margins command to estimate and interpret adjusted predictions and marginal effects. The Stata Journal12(2): 308–331.
53.
ZengZXieY (2004) Asian-Americans’ earnings disadvantage reexamined: the role of place of education. American Journal of Sociology109(5): 1075–1108.
54.
ZschirntERuedinD (2016) Ethnic discrimination in hiring decisions: a meta-analysis of correspondence tests 1990–2015. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies42(7): 1115–1134.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
