Climbing the Ladder: The Intergenerational Mobility of Second-Generation Immigrants in France (with Simone Moriconi, Ahmed Tritah and Nadiya Ukrayinchuk) - working paper here
Abstract
This paper investigates the drivers of intergenerational mobility in France, comparing second-generation immigrants to natives. By compiling multiple detailed French data sources on parents and their children aged 35–45, and constructing a novel individual-level metric, the Inter-generational Rank Difference (IRD), which captures upward and downward mobility relative to the highest-ranked parent, we document a robust social mobility premium for second-generation immigrants: they exhibit significantly greater upward mobility in both socioeconomic and educational dimensions compared to observationally equivalent natives. Upward mobility is driven more by labor market outcomes than education alone. Internal migration is key: 2nd generation immigrants benefit more than natives from moving to high-opportunity areas. Finally, we find strong spatial heterogeneity, with some departments offering substantially higher mobility returns for immigrants, suggesting localized “lands of opportunity.” These findings underscore the joint role of individual behavior and local context in shaping mobility among immigrants’ descendants.
Higher Education Expansion and the Upward Mobility of Immigrant Families in France - ongoing work, JMP
Abstract
This paper examines the democratization effect of higher education expansion with a focus on immigrants' children. I combine a newly constructed dataset on higher education institutions in France with individual-level administrative data. Applying a matching strategy and a two-way fixed-effects design interacted with a parental-origin indicator, I assess the differential causal impact of higher education departments creations in the 1990's on a new individual-level indicator of intergenerational social mobility, by parental origin. Children of immigrants see a 2.8 percentile greater increase in the income percentile difference with their parents than children of native-born parents. Further evidence indicates that the expansion was particularly advantageous for children of foreign-born parents located around the middle of the income distribution. The underlying mechanisms include local externalities, the creation of higher education units in more isolated territories, as well as increased access to STEM education. While the results vary according to the country of birth of the parents, no significant differences are observed by gender.
Cultural Shock Transmission and Integration of Second-Generation Immigrants (with Muriel Bour & Thomas Baudin) - ongoing work
Abstract
Differences in norms and traditions between immigrants and their host society are known to shape integration behaviours and the ways parents socialise their children. However, less is known about how the cultural distance between immigrants and natives at the time of arrival affects the integration of the second generation. Approaching culture through the lens of gender norms, this paper examines how the cultural shock experienced by first-generation migrants upon arrival shapes the multidimensional integration of their children in France. Our contribution is to measure cultural distance in a time-varying, arrival-cohort-specific way: using a dynamic index of gender norms, we construct the distance between France and each parent’s country of origin at the time of migration, allowing cultural exposure to differ across arrival cohorts within the same origin group. We show that greater parental cultural distance is associated with a weaker sense of belonging to France among second-generation immigrants, while having no detectable effect on labour-market outcomes. These relationships exhibit little heterogeneity by education or gender. Evidence on mechanisms points to the intergenerational transmission of more conservative views on gender roles and to larger attitudinal gaps with natives. Moreover, second-generation immigrants whose parents experienced a larger cultural shock appear to identify more strongly with their parents’ country of origin, consistent with a process of separation rather than marginalisation.
Masters thesis : Early Childhood Development, fertility and peer effects in Nepal (supervised by Elodie Djemai)