Language distance and labor market integration of migrants: Gendered perspective.

This paper examines the distinct effects of linguistics distance and language literacy on the labor market integration of migrant men and women. Using data from the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 2018 in 16 countries of destination mainly from Europe and more than 110 languages of origin, we assess migrant labor force participation, employment, working hours, and occupational prestige. The study finds that linguistics distance of the first language studied has a significant negative association with labor force participation, employment, and working hours of migrant women, even after controlling for their abilities in their destination language, education, and cultural distance between the country of origin and destination. In contrast, linguistics distance is only negatively associated with migrant men's working hours. This suggests that linguistic distance serves as a proxy for cultural aspects, which are not captured by cultural distance and hence shape the labor market integration of migrant women due to cultural factors rather than human capital. We suggest that the gender aspect of the effect of language proximity is essential in understanding the intersectional position of migrant women in the labor force.

Inequality of educational opportunity at time of schooling predicts cognitive functioning in later adulthood.

OBJECTIVES: Our understanding of how societal conditions and educational policies influence cognitive development across the life course is improving. We tested the extent to which inequality of educational opportunity (IEO), the country- and cohort-specific correlation of parents' and their offspring's length of schooling, offers systematically different opportunities to contribute to cognitive development, which in turn influences cognitive abilities up to older ages. METHODS: A total of 46,972 individuals of three cohorts born 1940-63 from 16 European countries and Israel provided up to six cognitive assessments and information on covariates in the SHARE survey 2004-2017. Individual-level data were linked to indicators of IEO at time of schooling, and economic, health, and human development, provided by World Bank, WHO, and the UN. RESULTS: In multilevel (mixed-effects) models with random individual and country-cohort effects and adjusted for a large set of confounders, higher IEO was associated with lower levels of cognitive functioning in men and women. Interaction analyses suggested lower cognitive levels particularly of women who were schooled in higher IEO contexts and had lower educational attainment. Associations with rate of change in cognitive functioning were present only in women, however there was little clinically relevant cognitive decline across the window of observation. Result patterns were mostly consistent after including additional contextual indicators, and in a subsample with childhood information. DISCUSSION: Findings suggest that IEO is able to substantially influence cognitive development with long-lasting impacts. Lower-educated women of the cohorts under investigation may have been particularly vulnerable to high-inequality educational contexts.

Rewealthization in twenty-first century Western countries: the defining trend of the socioeconomic squeeze of the middle class.

The wealth-to-income ratio (WIR) in many Western countries, particularly in Europe and North America, increased by a factor of two in the last three decades. This represents a defining empirical trend: a rewealthization (from the French repatrimonialisation)-or the comeback of (inherited) wealth primacy since the mid-1990s. For the sociology of social stratification, "occupational classes" based on jobs worked must now be understood within a context of wealth-based domination. This paper first illustrates important empirical features of an era of rising WIR. We then outline the theory of rewealthization as a major factor of class transformations in relation to regimes stabilized in the post-WWII industrial area. Compared to the period where wealth became secondary to education and earnings for middle-class lifestyles, rewealthization steepens society's vertical structure; the "olive-shaped" Western society is replaced by a new one where wealth "abundance" at the top masks social reproduction and frustrations below. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40711-020-00135-6.