Original Article
Immigrants’ Wage Performance in a Routine Biased Technological Change Era: France 1994–2012
Eva Moreno-Galbis,
Jeremy Tanguy,
Ahmed Tritah,
Catherine Laffineur,
Catherine Laffineur
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Eva Moreno-Galbis,
Jeremy Tanguy,
Ahmed Tritah,
Catherine Laffineur,
Catherine Laffineur
Search for more papers by this author
The authors’ affiliations are, respectively, Aix-Marseille Univ., CNRS, EHESS, Centrale Marseille, IRD, AMSE, Marseille, France. E-mail: [email protected]; University Savoie Mont Blanc, Annecy, France. E-mail: [email protected]; Le Mans Université, Mines ParisTech, Institut Convergences Migrations, Paris France. E-mail: [email protected]; and University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, Nice, France. E-mail: [email protected]. Eva Moreno-Galbis acknowledges financial support from the Institut Universitaire de France and the French National Research Agency Grant ANR-17-EURE-0020.
Abstract
Over the period 1994–2012, immigrants’ wage growth in France outperformed that of natives. We investigate to what extent changes in task-specific returns to skills contributed to this wage dynamics differential through two channels: changes in the valuation of skills (price effect) and occupational sorting (quantity effect). We find that the wage growth premium of immigrants is mainly explained by the progressive reallocation of immigrants toward tasks whose returns increase over time. Immigrants seem to have taken advantage of labor demand restructuring driven by globalization and technological changes.
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