Inequality among Immigrants in France

Date Presented:

Abstract:

Traditionally, French academics have not studied racial factors and the French government prohibits the collection of racial data. However, both academic and anecdotal data exists that suggests minorities in France, specifically those of Arab and African descent, face discrimination especially in the work force. My thesis aims to understand how ethnic origin plays in a role in the labor market.  Specifically, I aim to understand whether discrimination plays a role in wage differences observed between Arab/African immigrants and native French. The French Labor Force Survey is unique in that it tracks individual’s country of origin as well as parent’s country of origin, thus providing a quasi-measure of race. Using data on people’s googling habits as a proxy for xenophobia, I estimate levels of xenophobia at the regional level and link them to individual wage data.  Heightened levels of googling for relatively innocuous words such as Blacks and Arabes have little effect on wages. More data is forthcoming on more pejorative words such as meteque. I anticipate that there will be a strong positive effect of these search terms on wage differentials, by region. The narratives of successful French laborers of Arab and African descent have provided important insights into what factors allow individuals in France to flourish economically. At this stage, I have run simple multiple regressions using time and entity fixed effects to gauge the effect of xenophobia on the labor market. I am in the process of exploring different models to better identify how xenophobia affects wages and could use feedback on this aspect of the project. Another challenge is dealing with the presence of omitted variables that vary at both the regional and yearly level. Finally, some aspects of French culture have presented ongoing challenges namely, the hesitation to discuss salary and different internet usage.