Cultural Distance, Immigrants' Identity, and Labour Market Outcomes

Consistent estimates of the effect of ethnic identity on labor market outcomes is complicated by the endogenous relationship between performance on the labor market and attitudes towards ethnic identity. This paper uses measures of genetic and linguistic distance between an immigrants' home and host countries as instruments for ethnic identity. We find some evidence for adverse effects of home country identity on male immigrants' unemployment likelihood. Our results also suggest that a stronger host country identity only has a systematic effect on female employment and job satisfaction. Overall, ethnic identity appears to play only a negligible role in immigrants' labour market performance.