Employment Assimilation of Immigrants in The Netherlands: Dip and Catchup by Source Country

Using two Dutch labour force surveys, we compare employment assimilation of immigrants by source country, after ranking countries by presumed social-cultural distance to The Netherlands. We test this ranking of human capital transferability on the ranking by initial performance dip at entry as an immigrant and speed of assimilation as measured by the slope on years-since-migration. We also test the predicted association between entry gap and speed of assimilation (faster assimilation if the initial dip is larger). Both hypotheses are largely supported. Most immigrant groups never reach parity with native Dutch, neither in (un-)employment probability nor in job quality, and certainly not within 25 years after arrival