The Changing Face of Inequality: A Story of
European Political Economies and their Immigrants
Amanda Garrett
Department of Government, Harvard University
Objectives
• How to sharpen theoretically?
• Available data?
• More empirical work
Major Question
“Do immigrants tend to fare better (in
terms of socio-economic opportunity) in
some political economies than in
others?”
(Education and Job Opportunity)
Political Economy Perspective
• Varieties of Capitalism (Hall and
Soskice 2001)
• Social Protection and Skill Formation
(Estevez-Abe, Iversen, Soskice 2002)
• Gendering the Varieties of Capitalism
(Margarita Estevez-Abe 2002)
Varieties of Capitalism
• Firm-specific analysis and “Clusters of
Institutions”
• Liberal Market Economies (UK, US)
– Competitive Market, formal contracts
• Coordinated Market Economies
(Germany, Scandinavia)
– Intra- and Inter-firm coordination, info
networks
Skill Formation and Social
Protection
• General Skills (LME): high portability, objectively
certified
– Unemployment protection
• Industry Specific Skills (CME): low portability
– High unemployment, low employment protection
• Firm Specific Skills (CME): very low portability, onsite training
– High unemployment and employment protection
Gender Segregation
• Maternal leave makes general skills
more appealing
• There is less vertical and horizontal
gender segregation in LMEs than in
CMEs
Immigrants and Skill
Formation
• First generation will be societal “outgroup”
Hypothesis: Immigrants will fare better in
LMEs than in CMEs where general
skills make initial and mid-career entry
into the labour market more flexible
Data and Methods
• ESS Survey Rounds 1 & 2
• Individual-level skill specificity (Cusack,
Iversen, Rehm 2005)
• Descriptive Statistics
• Problems: 6500 Immigrants over 21
countries; United Kingdom is only LME
example
Dependent Variable
• “Inequality” measured as:
– Unemployment
– Vertical Segregation (Occupational
Hierarchy)
– Horizontal Segregation (Concentration in
Immigrant Jobs)
– Union Membership
Conclusions
• Data limitations make it hard to assess
hypotheses
• Cannot conclude immigrants are
differentially affected by VOC structures
• Need better data and perhaps different
variables or hypotheses?