A study by the OECD and the European Union confirms that the descendants of immigrants are more often unemployed or employed in low-paid jobs compared with young people without foreign origins.
Less skilled or less confined to gainful employment when they are employed, young immigrants suffer more from the lack of job prospects than their counterparts born in the country, a report of the Organization for Cooperation and Development Economic and European Union revealed on Thursday. “The place of birth of your parents still influences your chances of success in life,” says, Angel Gurría, OECD General Secretary.
The picture is clear: young people born in the country to immigrant parents have an unemployment rate 1.5 times greater than that of young people without migration background. According to the latter report, the children of immigrants face many difficulties in integrating into the OECD countries, particularly in the EU, where they are struggling to find work, especially because of their low level of studies.
However, the report notes, “the little or no graduates immigrants have higher employment rates than their counterparts born in the country.” However, they are often confined to low-paying jobs, with poor working conditions. As for immigrant university graduates, they suffer from ‘lower employment rates than their non -immigrant counterparts in almost all countries.
That being said, when employed, some are often overqualified compared to natives. This is especially true for those who have graduated abroad, which is the case for the majority of highly qualified immigrants. If the new generation often succeeds better than its ancestors, it did not feel less discriminated against, quite the opposite: “young people born in the country to immigrant parents (…) feel more frequently discriminated against because of their origins than are those who immigrated themselves. “
Since 2003, there has been an increase in the academic performance at the age of 15 years by the children of immigrants and children born to two parents born abroad, even though significant gaps remain, especially among Children born to parents with low educational level. Unsurprisingly, academic performance improves with length of residence in the host country: children born to foreign parents in the host countries perform better than young children who immigrated. Among the 22 OECD countries, almost one in five people aged 15 to 34 years is a child of immigrant or immigrated child.
