Did they take our jobs?

I would like to start this blog writing about a special subject to me, and the one that has covered my career in the last three years: the labour-market integration of migrant workers in Spain. To be honest, this is an issue over which we can spill lots of ink,  it could be even written an entire dissertation (as I am doing). Nonetheless, now I just want to shed the light on one specific angle. When we talk about economic migration we could refer to multiple features: what they do, under which conditions, what kind of occupational mobility they experience, the mismatch between occupation and skills, wage gaps with native-born workers, differences among male and female employees, and migrants’ work effects on the labour market and local people. The latter focuses my attention in this post.

Unlike other countries, Spain has recently become a migration depot, and thus the number of studies dealing with immigrant integration on the Spanish job market is very small. Yet little is known about its consequences and subsequent prospects, but due to the quantity of entries, recent migration doesn’t leave anybody unmoved. Nowadays, it’s not difficult to hear words such as “they take our jobs”. This post aims to clarify some of the stereotypes around migration and the labour market, through summarizing few research on that. The main purpose is to show that “migrant workers did not replace the local workforce”, at least not to date.

Migration is a source of uncertain attitudes in any host society because of its potential threats to native-born workers. We are usually worried about possible wage downwardings, or hypothetical lost of jobs available. In other words, we are afraid of earning less money and loosing our jobs due to an increase competition. Economics and Sociology suggest several theories around it,  some of them indeed contadictory.

I would like to highlight some of past research just to give a general idea. First of all, some authors suggest that impacts of immigrants’ labour over employment taxes of the native-born have been negative, although almost negligible, even for those markets where immigrant workers are overrepresented. This fact is explained by increasing employment taxes that have gone with the massive entrance of newcomers to the spanish labour market. Furthermore, this research points out, within the chapter on labour markets, that immigrant workers are employed on those sectors where local workers do not desire to work in, thus giving an incentive to occupy new job positions . This evidence is coherent with unemployment decline in Spain between 2000 and 2008. Immigration has been, in this sense, a mechanism to a greater flexibility, and thus easing some rigidity like limited mobility.

Along the same line, and following this study , immigrant workers have occupied different job position as locals, regarding similar educational levels. For this reason, both groups did not compete for same jobs, they did not do equal work, and thus they are not replacing labour-forces. That is to say, even having comparable skills the formers are not replacing the latters, denying the idea of “they take our jobs”. The construction sector has been a peculiar case, where different national origins merged but resulting in a occupational stratification according to ethnic features, like this ariticle shows.

Finally, probably the most paradigmatic example can be found among women workers. Some studies (this or this ) display that immigrant women have complemented national female employability, and particular of high skilled Spaniards, because they could rise their time working by employing domestic workers.

To sum up, there is empirical evidence to show that immigrant labour-force has complemented local workers rather than replacing them, within a general context of ecomonic growth and job generation. In this scenario, immigrant workforce did those jobs that native-borns did not wanted to do, because they undertake upwarding mobility.

The Sociological Perspective

We begin this blog talking about the Sociological Perspective. We are two sociologists with different careers, but with a common way of approaching to live: curiosity.

Sociology, by its very nature, is a questioning perspective, a ‘critical point of view’. All science must be suspicious of what people know from their everyday experience, but sociology especially must be suspicious, and this suspicion leads to a questioning, probing, doubting, analytical approach to understanding society and the human being. It questions what many people take from granted.

Back to the ancient Greek, probably the most famous Greek philosopher, Socrates, was never satisfied with the answers people gave to him. He questioned what people thought, and no matter what answer was given, Socrates had another question that caused further thought (see the Socratic Method). This is also the mission of sociologists: to probe the answers people give, to uncover what they believe, to examine reality through controlling personal and social bias, and to see human being in society as clearly and carefully as they possibly can.

In this blog, we will attempt to unfold false views on different topics which concern people and society. And we will do so from a sociological perspective (as Peter Berger claimed), and through the sociological imagination (as Charles Wright Mills suggested). That is to say, we will examine, for instance, the functions of religion in society, the dimensions of inequality, the meanings and contributions of entrepreneurship, the changing nature of family as a social institution, or the causes and consequences of international migration. Of course, others have previously done it  better than us (for instance, them, or them, or them among many many others). We would first summarise what others have said, and then try challenge it with our insights, just to contribute to a better understanding of our society.

We hope it could help our readers, and look forward for your suggestions and ideas.