Immigrants’ Labor Market Performance: with a Focus on Immigrant Women

Abstract

This paper critically reviews predominant works on the issue of labor market performance of women, focusing
particularly on the case of immigrant women in Canada, while also comparing with the case of immigrants in
America. It provides a brief conceptual explanation of immigration and its impact on the host economy. It observes
the eminent theories on labor market performance and factors influencing labor activity of immigrants. Due to the
expansive nature of this topic and the wide range of labor market performance indicators, it focuses on the following
indicators: wages, and earnings. Thus, welfare topics, such as welfare participation, contribution and expenditures,
incidence of unemployment, and that of poverty are not elaborated in these subsections. Finally it presents the
prominent themes in ongoing research concerning the determinants of labor market performance of immigrant
women, in particular the price explanation, the family investment hypothesis, the bargaining model and the
cultural effect model, while simultaneously providing critiques of the same.
Keywords: Bargaining model, Family investment hypothesis, Immigrant, Women, Labor