The job placement careers of young immigrants

Abstract

Some of the peculiarities of the Spanish labour markets affect young people dramatically especially aspects such as temporary contracts, turn over, occupational injuries, low salaries and very bad labour conditions in some job sectors. This scenario causes different job careers for young people than for the rest of the employed population. In this article we will try to answer some questions: Who should be considered young people? What proportion of the young are immigrants? Does this scenario affect especially and dramatically young people belonging to immigrated families? In other words, how does ethnicity affect the construction of different youths, as well as their professional careers. Therefore we have a double aim: First, to establish a frame for the labour incorporation of the young people. In order to achieve that we are going to examine data coming from the following secondary sources: Encuesta de población activa, Encuesta de estructura salarial, Encuesta de transición educativo formativa e inserción laboral (ETEFIL), Informe Juventud en España 2004, Padrón continuo de habitantes, Altas en las cotizaciones a la Seguridad Social) and Registro de jóvenes matriculados en enseñanzas no universitarias y universitarias. Second, to determine the elements that might explain different careers of young people belonging to immigrated families. We will follow the hypothesis that ethnicity is not the key element responsible for the youth’s differentiation but other dimensions such as learning processes, availability of jobs, or the «immigrant pattern» which characterizes the host society, thereby using both secondary sources and young people’s answers to in-depth interviews.