CPC researchers at COMPAS breakfast briefings

8 March and 12 April 2013 - CPC researchers, Dr Jo Sage and Professor Jackie Wahba, presented two Centre of Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) Breakfast Briefings on 8 March and 12 April respectively, looking at the migration pathways of UK graduates and how migrants use social networks to access jobs.

Through the Breakfast Briefing series COMPAS seeks to make available and discuss topical, cutting edge research on migration and migration related issues.

Looking at the migration pathways of UK graduates, Dr Sage summarised research tracing the lives of graduates across the five year period after leaving university, revealing that their migration pathways are often complex, non-linear and precarious. It is often assumed that the pathway from home to university and onwards to the labour market is a linear upward trajectory, ultimately resulting in improved opportunities and social betterment. However, during this prolonged period of instability the parental home (and parental support more generally) provides a crucial safety net, potentially placing additional burden on mid-life parents who may also have care responsibilities to the older parent generation. Within the context of an ageing population and extending transitions to adulthood, the implications of these findings for adult social care, young adult welfare and regional economic development policy were discussed.

Considering migrants and their use of social networks to access jobs, Professor Wahba provided a descriptive analysis of the role of social networks in the labour market, comparing immigrant and native men in the UK. The determinants of using social networks as a channel for looking for jobs was explored. The focus was not only on the main search method of job search, but also on whether social networks are used as a method of search among many alternative ones. The speakers then investigated the social network effects on labour market outcomes in terms of job finding rates. Based on the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the period 1992 to 2010, the analysis explored the role of two key aspects of immigrants' human capital: the education level and the years since immigration. The talk demonstrated that immigrants are more likely than White British-born to rely on using social networks as a main search method, while no crucial difference is found when personal contacts are used as a method of job search. Immigrants, though, are as likely as natives to find employment through the network, but for both, it is the less educated who are more likely to succeed in obtaining jobs through contacts. Finally the findings showed that there is no systematic pattern in the effect of years in the UK on job search success among immigrant groups.

Briefing summary documents, PowerPoint presentations and podcasts from the briefings can be found on the COMPAS website.

Posted 18/02/2013 14:35