The curse of inopportune transitions: The labour market behaviour of immigrants and natives in the UK

The article focuses on transitions between employment and not working among immigrants, the second generation and British-born Whites. We find evidence of lower stability in employment for New Commonwealth, Middle Eastern and Turkish immigrants. This penalization holds also for the second generation, especially in terms of exiting unemployment. On the other hand, no disadvantage is noted for labour immigrants from countries recently accessed to the EU such as Romanians and Bulgarians; or, if penalization is observed in the transition matrices, it disappears with controls for personal and labour market characteristics as is the case for EU8 and Eastern European immigrants. The continuous penalization of immigrants in Britain is confirmed; however, a dynamic perspective emphasizes that some immigrants, such as those from Eastern Europe, are less penalized than is observed in cross-sectional analyses.