HMN 2025: How Policies erode advantages gained by marriage for foreign-born people

According to new analysis by ILR Assistant Professor Tristan Ivory, intermarriage between foreign-born and native-born residents gives clear labor market advantages for the foreign-born associate that change relying on the reception of immigrants within the host nation. These findings are in step with a separate physique of literature that illustrates that societies which have extra welcoming immigration insurance policies are likely to result in higher outcomes for foreign-born people.

In his newest paper, “Labor of Love: Immigrant–Native Intermarriage and Labor Force Outcomes Across European Union Member States,” published in Demography, Ivory and his co-author, Chuling Adam Huang, Ph.D. ’26, used a number of information sources to look at whether or not a rustic’s insurance policies have an effect on the worth of a foreign-born particular person’s marriage to a native-born particular person and, if that’s the case, to what diploma.

“We noticed 1000’s of circumstances where unfavorable immigration insurance policies eroded the worth of intermarriage,” Ivory stated. “As nations turned extra hostile to outsiders, the worth of being married to a native-born individual decreased. It’s very immediately tied.”

The authors analyzed substantive modifications in immigrant occupational attainment throughout 20 European Union nations from 2008 to 2018 utilizing individual-level, cross-sectional information from the European Union Labor Force Survey on occupational attainment, in addition to country-level information from the European Social Survey on attitudes towards outsiders and the Migrant Integration Policy Index on integration insurance policies.

Their findings present that the affiliation between intermarriage and an immigrant’s occupation standing—the social and financial standing of an individual based mostly on their job or career—is stronger in nations with extra welcoming insurance policies. Likewise, they discovered that particular person attitudes towards outsiders had no vital impact on coverage.

“It’s not about attitudes, which is sort of counterintuitive,” Ivory stated. “The lay individual would say, “If an immigrant has to work together with hostile individuals, that may restrict their life possibilities,” however particular person opinions weren’t linked in any respect with the outcomes. It’s the insurance policies which might be vital.”

Using occupational standing, together with the moderating impact of coverage, offered additional proof that closed societies impede immigrant integration whereas deepening immigrant marginalization.

“My hope is that this paper will function one software within the toolkit for individuals to argue extra forcefully for insurance policies that will really assist to guard the pursuits of foreign-born individuals in an atmosphere through which their rights are going to be beneath risk,” Ivory stated. “This analysis exhibits that coverage actually issues by way of deciding whether or not or not foreign-born persons are going to have an equal shot at having a pleasant life.

“That’s one thing we should always all take critically.”