Understanding Occupational Mobility By Gender and Origin: A Mobility Network Approach

This paper explores occupational mobility and segregation among migrants and natives through a gendered lens using network analysis. While gender dynamics and the overrepresentation of migrants in lower-quality jobs have been extensively explored in social stratification research (Dickens & Lang, 1985; Portes & Zhou, 1993; Chiswick et al., 2005), most studies adopt static views of the labour market that cannot capture the dynamic and interdependent nature of labour trajectories. To address these gaps, novel methods stemming from statistical network research allow for a more comprehensive examination of mobility patterns.

This study conceptualises the labour market as a network, linking occupations based on worker transitions (Cheng & Park, 2020; Toubøl & Larsen, 2017). The analysis focuses on whether natives leave occupations at rates exceeding those predicted by occupational characteristics, considering the migrant composition of individuals entering those occupations. We disaggregate the analysis by gender and explore specific dynamics within sex-typed and sex-balanced occupations.

We employ mobility network analysis based on exponential family models, following the approach developed by Block (2023) and Block et al. (2022) Additionally, we apply a descriptive network approach to identify occupational submarkets and mobility typologies disaggregated by gender and origin. To this end, we use longitudinal EU-SILC data, allowing for a comparative study across European countries.

The study aims to uncover the structural determinants of mobility patterns by considering individual characteristics, occupational features, and the interdependence between migrant and native labour flows, which has been generally overlooked in previous research. Unlike traditional methods assuming independent observations, this dynamic approach models the endogeneity between occupational outflows and inflows, revealing how migrant movements influence native mobility patterns by gender.

By employing these innovative methodologies, our research offers fresh insights into labour market segmentation and migrant-native complementarities, while contributing to both theoretical and empirical understandings of occupational mobility.