Dagnelie, Olivier and Maystadt, Jean-Francois and Mayda, Anna Maria (2019) The labor market integration of refugees in the United States : do entrepreneurs in the network help? European Economic Review, 111: 111. pp. 257-272. ISSN 0014-2921
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Abstract
We investigate whether entrepreneurs in the network of refugees – from the same country of origin – help refugees enter the labor market by hiring them. We analyze the universe of refugee cases without U.S. ties who were resettled in the United States between 2005 and 2010. We address threats to identification due to refugees sorting into specific labor markets and to strategic placement by resettlement agencies. We find that the probability that refugees are employed 90 days after arrival is positively affected by the number of business owners in their network, but negatively affected by the number of those who are employees. This suggests that network members who are entrepreneurs hire refugees, while network members working as employees compete with them, which is consistent with refugees complementing the former and substituting for the latter.