Ethnic penalties in the transition to and from unemployment: A West European perspective

The gap between unemployment rate of immigrants and that of natives varies across West European countries. This article aims at explaining these differences by taking into account economic and institutional characteristics of labour markets and by adopting a dynamic perspective, that is, disentangling the risk of being unemployed into two different risks: that of entering unemployment and that of remaining in long-term unemployment. From the analyses of yearly transitions to/from unemployment, less immigrant penalization results in those countries where the employment protection legislation is stricter, the labour demand is more biased towards low skilled jobs and the welfare state is less generous for the unemployed. Furthermore, the article summarizes the main results of five country studies also focused on labour market transitions of immigrants and natives. © The Author(s) 2011.