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The educational and labor market outcomes of the first, first-and-a-half (1.5), second, and third generations of immigrants to the United States (US) and Canada are compared. These countries’ immigration policies have diverged on important dimensions since the 1960s, resulting in large differences in immigrant source country distributions and a much larger emphasis on skill requirements in Canada, making for interesting comparisons. Of particular note is the educational attainment of US immigrants which is currently lower than that in Canada and is expected to influence future second generations causing an existing education gap to grow. This will likely in turn influence earnings where, controlling only for age, the current US second generation has earnings comparable to those of the third generation, whereas the Canadian second generation has higher earnings. Importantly, the role of, and returns to, observable characteristics are significantly different between the US and Canada. Observable characteristics explain little of the difference in earnings outcomes across generations in the US but have remarkable explanatory power in Canada. Controlling for a wide array of characteristics, especially education, has little effect on the US second generation's earnings premium, but causes the Canadian premium to become negative relative to the Canadian third generation. The Canadian 1.5 and second generations’ educational advantage is of benefit in the labor market, but does not receive the same rate of return as it does for the third generation causing a very sizable gap between the current good observed outcomes, and the even better outcomes that would be expected if the 1.5 and second generation received the same rate of return to their characteristics as the third generation. Why the US differs likely follows from a combination of its lower immigration rate, its different selection mechanism, and its settlement policies and practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the key differences between first- and second-generation immigrant entrepreneurs in their path to entrepreneurship. The aim of the study is to better understand entrepreneurial motivations amongst immigrants by comparing first- and second-generation entrepreneurs in their motivation for business entry, reliance on co-ethnic market, use of social and financial capital, business planning and marketing practices.

Using an interpretivist approach and a qualitative design, this study comprises 20 in-depth interviews with first- and second-generation Turkish entrepreneurs (TEs) in Melbourne, Australia. Turks in Australia were chosen because of their high level of entrepreneurial activity. In order to uncover deep-seeded motivations, participants were interviewed in a face-to-face format guided by a semi-structured interview guide.

The second-generation TEs were distinctively different from their first-generation counterparts in motivation for business entry, business establishment and use of ethnicity. The analysis shows that although the generations differ in their approach to business establishment, they both appear to be drawn to entrepreneurship based on “pull factors”. This is in contrast with previous literature suggesting that first-generation immigrant entrepreneurs were motivated by “push factors”.

This paper suggests that both first- and second-generation immigrant entrepreneurs are “pulled” into entrepreneurship voluntarily. While the first-generation entrepreneurs seem to be motivated/pulled by financial reasons, the second generation are motivated by opportunity recognition, status and ambition. Nevertheless, a lack of trust in government support agency is found within both generations. Thus, outreach activities towards entrepreneurial immigrant communities may have positive effects for the economy as well as in the integration of ethnic enclaves.

While the issue of “Blackness” has long pervaded American society, it has rarely been problematized in social science literature and treated as a taken-for-granted. This article utilizes in-depth interviews with second generation West Indian adults in New York City to examine the ways in which they conceive of their Blackness, both racially and ethnically. New York City is viewed as an important urban context that in many ways facilitates the formation of identity for this population. The assimilation process, or not, of second generation West Indians is also considered in terms of socioeconomic status and gender. The results indicate that second generation West Indians strongly identify with both their racial and ethnic identities, which in turn calls for a reconceptualization of “Blackness”. There is also evidence that points to New York City as a space of cross-cultural integration where identity formation is significantly impacted by the presence of other immigrants (and their children) that leads to a pan-immigrant or pan-ethnic identity among young New Yorkers.

This article deals with the impact of ethnic origin on individual employability, focussing on the first stage of the hiring process. Deeply, the authors’ goal is to fathom whether there is a preference for native job candidates over immigrants, decomposing the discrimination against minority groups into its statistical and taste-based components by means of a new approach.

The authors built up a data set by means of an ad hoc field experiment, conducted by sending equivalent fictitious CVs in response to 1000 real online job openings in Italy. The authors developed the discrimination decomposition index using first- and second-generation immigrants.

The authors’ main result is that both first- and second-generation immigrants are discriminated compared to Italians. In between the two categories, second-generation candidates are discriminated especially if their ethnicities are morphologically different from those of natives (i.e. Chinese and Moroccans). This last finding is a clear symptom of discrimination connected to taste-based reasons. On the other hand, first-generation immigrants of all nationalities but Germans are preferred for hard-work jobs.

The authors develop the discrimination decomposition index to measure the proportion of the two kinds of discrimination (statistical and taste-based) over the total one and apply a probit model to test the statistical significance of the difference in treatment between the three groups of natives, first-generation and second-generation immigrants.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between childhood neighbourhood ethnic composition and short- and long-run economic outcomes of second-generation immigrants and natives in Sweden.

The author uses Swedish longitudinal register data and apply regression analysis methods to investigate the correlation between three ethnic neighbourhood variables(share of immigrants, share of immigrants with the same ethnic background and share of immigrants with other descent) in childhood with short- and long-run economic outcomes (earnings, unemployment, reliance on social assistance and educational attainment).

The results show that second-generation immigrants raised in immigrant-dense neighbourhoods have a lower probability to continue to higher education, whereas, their earnings, unemployment and social assistance tendencies are unaffected. On the contrary, natives’ earnings and educational attainment are negatively correlated with, and the probability of social assistance and unemployment are positively associated with a high immigrant concentration. Moreover, the social assistance and unemployment of non-Nordic second-generation immigrants appears to be negatively correlated with the neighbourhood share of co-ethnics and positively correlated with the neighbourhood proportion of other ethnic groups. Overall, the author finds that the results are very similar in the short and long run.

This paper expands the literature on children and ethnic segregation and in contrast to earlier research in this context, it focuses on second-generation immigrants and their performance in comparison to natives. This study contributes to this research area by investigating a large variety of outcomes, looking at both immigrant, own ethnic group and other ethnic group concentration and including both short- and long-run correlations.

Engages in debate regarding immigrants and ethnicity in the USA. Research, based on second‐generation West Indian immigrants, shows ethnicity has very real implications for immigrants’ life experience. Suggests that black immigrants complicate the slight understanding of blackness in general, but also the understanding of identity development.

Studies examining immigrant generational status and violence have supported differences in the prevalence of violence between these groups. The purpose of this paper is to measure relevant risk factors for violence to focus on whether negative perceptions may contribute to understanding the between-generations differences in violence. Based on the literature, it is theorised that pro-violence attitudes would be related to and be higher in second-generation immigrants than first-generation immigrants, and that negative perceptions would mediate the relationship between pro-violence attitudes and violence.

Data to answer the study’s key questions were taken from the 2010-2011 UK citizenship survey, where only the main sample was analysed.

The findings reveal that first-generation immigrants have a higher prevalence of pro-violence attitudes than the native population.

This suggests that there is an intergenerational transmission in violent attitudes, and this is a risk factor for actual violence in second-generation immigrants.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the gap in reading literacy of young immigrant children in Italy and examine if this gap is significantly influenced by pupils’ length of stay in Italy and country of origin.

The author estimate a standard education production function where student test performance in language is modelled as a function of the native vs immigrant first- and second-generation status and a set of additional variables that control for students, schools and catchment area characteristics. In the analysis the author use the 2010-2011 school-year data for four stages of schooling: second and fifth grade/year of primary school, sixth grade of lower secondary school and tenth grade upper secondary school.

Results confirm the presence of a significant gap between natives and immigrants students in school outcomes for all grades, with first-generation immigrants showing the largest gap. Further, comparing the results between first- and second-generation immigrant students suggests that the average significant gap observed in the first generation is mainly due to the negative performance of immigrant children newly arrived in Italy. That is, for first-generation students, closing the gap with second-generation ones seems to be, for the most part, a matter of time. At the same time, the gap between natives and second-generation immigrants remains significant in all grades. Finally, when the author compare the results across the different years, it turns out that interventions at younger ages are likely to be more effective.

Despite the availability of a rich set of controls, endogeneity issues may play a role in the analysis.

Results suggest that if the foreign children’s late arrival is the result of national migration policies on family reunification, the authorities need to carefully compare the possible benefit of delaying immigrant family reunification against the possible costs of students’ lower school performance.

Among economist, only few recent studies address the important question of whether the age at arrival and the length of stay in the host country matters for immigrants’ educational achievements. Moreover, while according to PISA 2009 results, Italy has some of the largest native-immigrant school performance gaps among OECD countries there are no studies that investigate this issue.

Instead of identifying them as a single monolithic group, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether the academic performance of black immigrants differs from African Americans as well as Asian and Hispanic students of comparable immigrant generation. By identifying how well black immigrant students perform on standardized tests, grade point averages (GPA) and college enrollment, this study proposes a more comprehensive look into this growing immigrant group.

The research uses a data from the Educational Longitudinal Survey of high school sophomores conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. Data used in this study are from the baseline survey in 2002 and the second follow-up in 2006 when most students had graduated from high school. The methodology includes OLS, binary and ordered logistic regression models.

The study finds that while second-generation blacks outperform the native-born generation on standardized tests, this does not extend to GPA or college enrollment. In fact, it appears that only second-generation Hispanic students have an advantage over their native-born counterparts on GPA and standardized tests. Furthermore, first and second-generation Asian immigrants do not show a higher likelihood of enrolling in college than their native-born counterparts nor do they report higher GPA.

This paper sheds light on a growing yet understudied immigrant population as well as drawing comparisons to other immigrant groups of comparable generation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine interethnic differences in the degree of participation in social assistance, disability, and unemployment benefits during the working‐age period.

Using individual register data of the entire immigrant population for 2005 from Statistics Netherlands, the paper employs standard probit models to estimate differences in welfare use between immigrant groups that are divided into the first and second generations.

The analysis shows that migrants from non‐western countries, both first and second generation, have a higher probability of participation in social assistance and disability‐benefit programs and to a lesser extent in unemployment‐benefit programs. A large part of migrants’ welfare dependence can be explained by their background characteristics and immigration history, but a significant unexplained residual is still left. Strikingly, the degree of dependence of second‐generation non‐western migrants on social assistance is similar to their parents’.

A higher welfare dependency of non‐western immigrants is probably related to the admittance policy. Most immigrants from developing countries are allowed to enter The Netherlands on humanitarian grounds, as family or asylum migrants.

This study is the first scholarly investigation of welfare use by immigrants and their descendants in The Netherlands. An additional novel feature is that the study covers three major social‐welfare benefits for those aged between 19 and 64 years.