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This article examines the extent to which the increasing ethnic diversity of Northern Europe’s population translates into exposure between natives and migrants (and their descendants) in the workplace, using Danish register data over nearly three decades. Consistent with the expectations of neo-assimilation theory, we find that Danish workplaces have become a common site of mutual exposure, including exposure between natives and two subcategories of culturally distant migrants. At the same time, consistent with segmented assimilation theory, we find increasing segmentation, even in a highly regulated Danish labour market. The distribution of migrants and their descendants in workplaces increasingly deviates from a (simulated) random distribution and we find increasing discrepancies between opportunity pools and exposure levels, particularly at the lower end of the labour market. By opening the black box of workplace composition, this article demonstrates the co-occurrence of increased exposure and labour market segmentation, with its potential to respectively facilitate and hinder integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies the social relationships of natives in the destination countries of migrants. Specifically, the article estimates the share of non-natives in natives' friendship opportunity pools (FOP) and its correlation with natives only having native friends. Danish data is used due to a unique possibility of linking register information, allowing the establishment of an objective measurement of FOP at various levels, and survey information, allowing the measurement of natives' friendship composition, at the individual level. In our sample, 55 per cent of the natives have a migrant friend, and it is found to be strongly correlated with FOP. In line with Blau's macro-sociological framework and assimilation theory, we thereby find support for a transformation of the 'weak' friendship ties of natives in destination countries. The FOP effects are found to be stronger for older respondents and those with negative attitudes toward immigration. The effects are found across measurement at the neighbourhood-, parish – and municipal level and after control for general attitudes toward immigration. In models with three levels simultaneously included, the effects are present at the neighbourhood and municipal level, but absent at the parish level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the impact of literacy skills on wage differences between natives and immigrants, using Austria as a case study. We show that, for both groups, literacy skills are an important determinant of the hourly wage. In the second step, we show that differences in proficiency with respect to literacy can explain more than 30% of the total wage gap of 11 log points between natives and immigrants. When adding literacy skills to the wage decomposition, the unexplained part vanishes almost completely, suggesting that the wage difference between immigrants and natives can, to a large extent, be explained. The importance of literacy skills in explaining wage differences between natives and immigrants is robust across several sensitivity tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on inter-ethnic contact in Europe usually tells the story only from the perspective of immigrants. This study contributes to the literature by simultaneously examining immigrants' contacts with natives and natives' contacts with immigrants. Using the theory of preferences and structural constraints, hypotheses are formulated about the attitudinal and socio-demographic determinants of inter-ethnic contact for these two groups. Analysis of the data from a Dutch survey, which targeted four large groups of immigrants and the native population, reveals that immigrants more often engage in contact with natives than the other way around. Education is the strongest determinant of inter-ethnic contact, and it works in the opposite direction for the two groups: higher-educated immigrants have more, and higher-educated natives less, inter-ethnic contact. The study further shows that, while both preferences and structural constraints play a role in bringing about inter-ethnic contact, structural constraints seem to be more consequential. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]