Economic assimilation of immigrants : a comparison between Norway and Canada

Abstract

The economic assimilation of immigrants in Norway is analyzed in this thesis. Since Norway and Canada have different immigration policies, the economic assimilations of immigrants in these two countries are compared. Unlike Norway, Canada uses a “point system” to target economic and demographic growth which results in a large class of economic immigrants. The entry effect, the years effect, the cohort effect and the period effect, as defined in previous academic literature, are considered. In particular two components of years effect, namely the experience effect and the years since migration (YSM) effect, are identified. The empirical findings on Norwegian data are compared with the some of the findings on Canadian data from Green and Worswick (2004). The patterns between immigrants’ area of origin and entry earnings are similar in Norway and Canada, with English mother tongue speakers having the highest entry earnings among immigrants in both countries. When the skill level of immigrants is considered in addition to area of origin, low-skilled immigrants in Norway are found at a more advantageous position than high-skilled immigrants in terms of economic assimilation. The opposite is true about immigrants in Canada and this may arise from differences in immigration policies.