Labour market integration of second generation migrants in France: influence of gender and origin on the access to first job

Elsa Steichen, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Currently in France, children of non-European immigrants are reaching the age of leaving school and entering the labour market. The school-to-work transition is a crucial step because it has a great impact on the future professional trajectory. Consequently there is a growing concern regarding their integration into the labour market. The Génération 2004 survey allows longitudinal analysis of this transition with a follow-up month by month over three years of youths who left school in 2004. This study focus on the access to first job by firstly describing the characteristics of the first job and secondly modeling the time required to find the first job. Our main research question is to determine whether 1) the influence of gender is different according to the origin and 2) the influence of origin is different according to gender. Thus, our analysis takes into account the specific effects of gender, the specific effects of origin and the combined effects of gender and origin. Three groups of “origin” are compared: the children of natives, the children of South European immigrants and the children of North African immigrants. This study shows that while there are very few differences in the access to first job of the South European second generation and the children of natives, the North African second generation is disadvantaged : their first job is less secured and they take more time to obtain it. When introducing gender, daughters of North African migrants appear to be more penalised in their time to any first job than their male counterparts whereas there is no difference regarding the time to the first long job or to the first open-ended contract. These results question the “double discrimination” hypothesis which states that second generation women should be the most disadvantaged because they face both racial and gender discrimination.