Immigration and Employment: Substitute Versus Complementary Labor in Selected African Countries

Immigration and Employment: Substitute Versus Complementary Labor in Selected African Countries
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Volume/Issue: Volume 2020 Issue 149
Publication date: July 2020
ISBN: 9781513551937
$18.00
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Labor , Emigration and Immigration , WP , immigration share , wage employment , native worker , immigration's impact , impact immigration , Immigration , Formal and Informal Sector , Employment , Occupational Choice , Complementary Versus Substitute Skills , Cameroon , Ghana , South Africa , employment rate , supply shock , Migration , Labor markets , Informal employment , Self-employment , Africa , Sub-Saharan Africa , origin country

Summary

This paper uses census and household survey data on Cameroon, Ghana, and South Africa to examine immigration’s impact in the context of a segmented labor market in Sub-Saharan Africa. We find that immigration affects (i) employment (ii) employment allocation between informal and formal sectors, and (iii) the type of employment within each sector. The direction of the impact depends on the degree of complementarity between immigrants and native workers’ skills. Immigration is found to be productivity-enhancing in the short to near term in countries where, the degree of complementarity between immigrants and native workers’ skill sets is the highest.