The Mobility of Immigrants and Natives: Evidence from Internal Migration Following Job Displacement

Boman A. The mobility of immigrants and natives: evidence from internal migration following job displacement, Regional Studies. In times of change in the labour market, differences in migratory behaviour between groups affect the labour market outcome of these groups. One important group in society is that of immigrants, for which human capital migration theory presents two potentially conflicting hypotheses. One is based on immigrants having less location-specific human capital, increasing their probability of migration. The other is based on ethnicity: immigrants living in ethnic enclaves have higher costs of leaving the enclave, reducing their probability of migration. This paper disentangles and finds support for both hypotheses using high-quality data on a wide range of variables for essentially all individuals involuntarily displaced due to closures or substantial cutbacks of Swedish workplaces in 1987 and 1988.