DP2047 Portuguese Migrants in the German Labour Market: Performance and Self-Selection

Author(s):	Thomas Bauer, Pedro Telhado Pereira, Michael Vogler, Klaus F Zimmermann
Publication Date:	December 1998
Keyword(s):	labour market performance of migrants, Migration Policy, Portuguese Migration, self-selection of migrants
JEL(s):	F22, J61
Programme Areas:	Labour Economics
Link to this Page:	cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=2047

Using a large new data set, we analyse the labour market performance of Portuguese workers in Germany. While previous work compares wages and characteristics of migrants only to those of natives, we match the data also with an equivalent survey from the sending country. We find that Portuguese migrants as a whole are negatively selected with the exception of blue-collar workers that are the greatest group among them. The observation that Portuguese migrants earn more than comparable Germans indicates that they have higher unobservable skills. Our results confirm the effectiveness of the German guest worker system.