Lift the Ban? Initial Employment Restrictions and Refugee Labor Market Outcomes

Refugee migration has recently occupied the central stage in the European migration policy debate. Indeed, the number of first-time asylum applications in EU countries has rapidly increased over the last decade, relative to previous years, and reached a peak during the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015. Between 2012 and 2020, 6.1 million asylum applications have been filed in EU countries (including the UK), and the number of those with recognized refugee status has risen from 1.3 to 2.8 million over that period. These remarkable numbers necessarily raise the question of how to effectively and smoothly integrate such a large refugee population into host countries’ labor markets and societies. Little is known, however, about the crucial role that asylum policy design plays in shaping this process. Determining which specific features of asylum legislation can accelerate or hinder refugee integration lies at the core of the current policy debate. Evidence from past waves of forced migration in Europe (Fasani et al. 2021, Brell et al. 2020) suggests that refugees face significant hurdles to integrate in the labor market relative to both comparable natives and non-forced migrants. It would be thus reasonable to expect that asylum policies should aim to minimize those hurdles, rather than adding new ones...