When Race Is not The Issue: Education and Labor Market Outcomes of European-Educated Immigrants in the U.S.

Cristina Bradatan, Texas Tech University
Laszlo J. Kulcsar, Kansas State University

In this paper we study the effects of the education level on the labor force participation and income of European immigrants in the U.S.. Although there are seven million European born currently living in the U.S., they are a rather understudied group, most probably because of the assumption of an unproblematic assimilation in the mainstream U.S. society. Using secondary data from the Current Population Survey and New Immigrants Survey and in-depth interviews with educated immigrants, we compare here the labor market outcomes of the native whites and immigrant European population, focusing on the differences that education makes in the lives of these immigrants.