Migrant Network and Immigrants’ Occupational Mismatch

This article defines new measures of horizontal and vertical occupational mismatch based on the difference between the skill content of occupations in which individuals have a self-assessed productive advantage, and that of their actual job. It then investigates the impact of network use to find a job on occupational mismatch in the case of immigrants, using original survey data collected among Senegalese immigrants in four host countries. Estimation results show that migrants who obtained their job through the migrant network have a lower probability of negative vertical mismatch. By contrast, network use is not found to significantly affect horizontal mismatch.