Social mobility sans frontieres? Results from a survey on immigrants in France

In research on immigration, a lot of attention is devoted to the intergenerational socio-economic mobility of second and third generation immigrants, but little is known about the class mobility of first generation migrants. We address this issue with the use of a representative survey on middle-aged and elderly immigrants in France. A comparison between the socio-economic status of each male respondent during his childhood and at the time of the interview reveals some variation in class mobility across countries and regions of origin. At the same time, our analysis of the main determinants of the socio-economic status of the respondents at the end of their careers highlights a strong influence of the socio-economic environment during their childhoods and gives support to our main hypothesis of a dominance effect.