The Employment of Second Generation Turkish and Majority-Group Women in Europe: Influences of Country Context, Origin and Childbearing

Jennifer A. Holland, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) and University of Wisconsin-Madison

Entering and establishing oneself in the labour market are central to the transition to adulthood. Using data from “The Integration of the European Second-Generation” (TIES) survey (N = 1,749), we consider variation in employment of second generation Turkish and majority young adult women. We explore how this relationship varies across four European countries (Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Sweden) in order to assess how institutional contexts, migrant background and differential assimilation shape employment among Turkish second generation women relative to their majority-background counterparts. While we observe lower levels of employment among second generation Turkish women as compared to their majority group counterparts, our findings indicate that institutional country context matters for employment of all women in society, regardless of ethnic background. Although motherhood is negatively associated with employment, we do not find evidence that this association varied by ethnicity.