Anales del Congreso ALAP
Anales del X Congreso ALAP

Latin-American migrants in Europe represent a very important share of the population of some European countries, like Spain and Portugal, but they also represent a relevant share of population in other countries like Switzerland, Italy, and Sweden. Moreover, these countries differ in terms of their immigration rules, welfare state programs, but also their culture and attitudes in front of migration. All of these are important factors that determine the level of integration as well as the health status of Latin-Americans, that could affect their ability to work, and their willingness to work in case of a health problem. Migrants enjoy a relative better health when they take the decision to migrate, the so-called “healthy migrant effect” (Neuman, 2014), but they are usually forced to be employed in more manual occupations, to be overqualified for their jobs, to experience more in-work poverty and work more atypical hours, which affects their health in the long-run. The objective of this paper is to estimate if there are differences in the level of inactivity due to health reasons between Latin-American born individuals and natives, and if these differences differ by country of residence. We will use the European Labor Force Survey from 2019 to compare Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, which where the countries reporting a higher level of Latin-American born people in the 2010 round censuses. Results show that for Latin-American born individuals, the time since arrival to the country is crucial to report a higher or a lower chance of being inactive due to an illness or a disability. Differences with natives are not significant in the majority of countries, for Latin-Americans that resided for 10 years or less, but those that have resided for more than 10 years in the country show a consistent higher chance of being inactive for health reasons in Spain, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland. The exception is Portugal, where all Latin-Americans show a lower chance of reporting inactivity due to an illness or a disability. Differences between countries show that Sweden is the country where Latin-American migrants have a higher chance of reporting inactivity due to health problems, and Spain is the country with the lower chance. Differences observed between Latin-Americans that arrived more recently and those that have been residing for a longer time could be explained by a stronger deterioration of their health after some years, although other institutional and selection reasons could be also behind this evidence. Country disparities, as well, may be a result of different patterns of integration of Latin-Americans but could also be due to different disability policies that would be more or less restrictive in each country.