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, on- site 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 “out- group” 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?