This chapter is about how migrants fare economically, that is, what their incomes look like, in the receiving countries. Its central message is that even when they are averaged over large groups, migrants’ incomes look very different in different cases. Some groups have higher average incomes than natives already upon arrival, and their incomes keep rising further the longer they stay in the country. Others begin with incomes far below those of natives and not even their children— or their grandchildren— fully catch up. The chapter thus emphasizes that migration comprises manifold things, and underscores the importance of separating these when thinking about migration.

The main focus is to illustrate how large differences often are. When it is easy to explain why the differences that are shown look the particular way that they do then explanations are provided. Yet in several cases no effort is made to provide explanations. Much of the point is that the performance of each single migrant group is the unique outcome of a combination of many factors. Some— like education levels and selectivity of immigration laws— are measurable. Others— probably much related to ability, motivation and self-selection— are not. It is often difficult to explain why a particular group performs better or worse than another. And the aim of the chapter is not to highlight particular groups as much as the vast amount of variation itself.

Variation across sending and receiving countries

There are clear differences between receiving countries in who the “typical” immigrant is. Immigrants are, for example, more often highly educated labor immigrants in Anglo-Saxon countries, more often less-educated labor immigrants in the Netherlands and Germany and more often refugees in Sweden and Norway. Immigration in some countries is, or at least was, much shaped by historical colonial relations. In Italy and Spain the typical immigrant arrived quite recently, while, for example, in France it is more common to have been in the country for decades (or to be a native-born child of immigrants).

It is thus not surprising to find considerable variation in immigrants’ labor market performance even when we take averages over the entire immigrant populations in different receiving countries.