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Work/Family Policies and Immigrant Women’s Labor Market Participation in Western Europe

Sun, August 23, 12:30 to 2:10pm, TBA

Abstract

Many groups of migrants and their descendants in Western European countries experience low labor force participation rates, and this is most striking among migrant women, who, even when they have a similar family structure to native-born women, often work at far lower rates. Nevertheless, there is clear evidence that the employment rates of migrant women vary dramatically across European host societies. I argue in this paper that migrant women’s labor force participation is shaped markedly by the welfare-state institutions, and work-family policies in particular, of host societies. Furthermore, the effects of work-family policies interact with the cultural and familial norms about women’s labor force participation that women have been exposed to in families and countries of origin. For migrant women of most concern to policymakers – migrant women from outside of the EU – work-family policies are most important in the absence of strong cultural or familial norms supporting employment. This suggests a truly causal effect of work-family policies on women’s labor force participation, and overcomes endogeneity problems of existing research on the effects of work-family policies.

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