آیا مهاجرت انعطاف پذیری بازار کار را افزایش می دهد ؟

The question we investigate empirically in this article is whether immigration makes the labour supply in the receiving country more responsive to regional differences in economic opportunities. The main merit of the paper is that we examine three stages in the regional mobility of refugees and labour immigrants: First, the settlement pattern of newly arrived immigrants, second, their subsequent mobility between regions and, third, their eventual exit from the regional labour market to abroad. The analyses apply to immigrants who arrived in Norway from 1995 to 2004. In all three stages, mobility is investigated with regard to its responsiveness to regional differences in wages and unemployment. The main finding is that, in all three stages, the geographical mobility of immigrants is sensitive to regional economic opportunities. In that sense, immigrants do “grease the wheels” of the labour markets, through all the three stages of mobility. The most robust results are found for regional unemployment differences. With regard to natives, we generally do not find any strong evidence for “greasing the wheels” effects.

Within the traditional neoclassical model, workers respond to spatial disparities in labour market opportunities by moving in the direction of higher expected wages and, thus, contribute to the equalization of marginal productivity across regions. When wages do not adjust perfectly to shifts in demand and supply, geographical mobility contributes to restore the balance in the regional labour markets. Accordingly, if the geographical mobility of the labour force becomes more responsive to regional disparities in economic opportunities total productivity increases. Along with the increase of immigration to many developed countries, there has been a growing interest in analysing economic consequences of immigration in the receiving countries. A large share of economic studies has analysed the effect of immigration on native wage and employment opportunities.2 In this paper we build on a smaller literature analysing the effect of immigration on labour market efficiency. The main idea in this literature is the following: if the mobility of immigrants is more responsive to regional differences in labour market opportunities, they contribute more than natives to reduce inefficiency caused by a suboptimal regional distribution of labour. When this mechanism is at work, the prediction of the neoclassical model is that regional convergence in wages and unemployment will be faster in periods of high immigration and among skill groups that receive a relatively high share of new workers from abroad. In this mechanism is at work this efficiency gain should be accounted for when costs and gains from higher immigration are summarised. The question we ask in this paper is the one posed in Borjas (2001); whether immigration, in this manner, greases the wheels of the regional labour markets. Our empirical approach to answer this question is to investigate empirically whether immigrants make the Norwegian labour supply more responsive to regional differences in economic opportunities. In general, the mobility of workers between regions, as well as their mobility between participation and nonparticipation in the regional labour forces, affects this responsiveness. The main merit of the paper is that we examine three stages in the regional mobility of immigrants with regard to variations in local economic opportunities: (1) the settlement patterns of newly arrived immigrants, (2) their subsequent mobility between regions, and (3) their eventual emigration out of the country. By this approach we, to some extent, choose broadness on the expense of deepness. That is, to assess the broad picture of how immigration affects geographical labour market flexibility, there is less space for a detailed documentation of each of these stages. The groups studied are refugees and labour immigrants who arrived in Norway during the period 1995–2004. In addition, the mobility pattern of a representative group of native Norwegians is analysed. The paper is organized as follows: In the remainder of the introduction we take a brief look at arguments substantiating the hypothesis that the mobility of immigrants is more responsive to regional differences in economic opportunities. Then, we give a presentation of earlier research and what we consider to be the contributions of this paper. The introduction ends with a short description of Norwegian immigration policy and the institutional setting. In Section 2 the empirical method and data are presented. In Section 3 we present the results, and in Section 4 we end with some concluding remarks.

The question we investigate empirically in this article is whether immigration makes the labour supply in the receiving country more responsive to regional differences in economic opportunities. The mobility of workers between regions, as well as the mobility between participation and nonparticipation in the regional labour force, affects this responsiveness. The main merit of the paper is that we examine three stages in the regional mobility of refugees and labour immigrants; first, the settlement pattern of newly arrived immigrants, second, their subsequent mobility between regions and, third, their eventual exit from the regional labour market to abroad. In all three stages, mobility is investigated with regard to its responsiveness to regional differences in wages and unemployment. The sample we study is immigrants who arrived in Norway from 1995 to 2004. The mobility behaviour of immigrants is compared to the mobility behaviour of natives. The main finding is that, in all three stages, the geographical mobility of immigrants is sensitive to regional economic opportunities. The most robust results are found for the unemployment differences, i.e., the results suggests that immigrants react to regional differences in labour market opportunities, and the results suggest that it is differences in unemployment that is the most important driving force. With regard to natives, we generally do not find any strong evidence for “greasing the wheels” effects. Concretely, in their choice of first settlement labour immigrants are negatively affected by the unemployment levels that prevail in the Norwegian counties in the year they enter the country. The settlement pattern of native movers is not responsive to variations in these indicators of regional labour market opportunities in the receiving counties. With regard to the subsequent mobility between regions, refugee immigrants move towards counties with lower unemployment and higher wages. Labour immigrants subsequent mobility is sensitive to regional differences in unemployment. The regional mobility of natives is generally not responsive to differences in wages and unemployment levels between counties. The emigration of labour immigrants and refugees is sensitive to labour market conditions in the counties in which they live before they move from Norway. For both groups, the level of unemployment has a positive effect on the likelihood of emigration out of Norway. Taken together, the analyses in this paper suggest that increased immigration makes the labour supply more responsive to regional differences in economic conditions. In that sense, immigrants do “grease the wheels” of the labour markets, through their initial settlement, their subsequent region-to-region mobility, and their eventual emigration out of Norway.