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Abstract: The immigrant selectivity hypothesis posits that migrants are selected on both observed characteristics, such as education, and unobserved characteristics such as skills, traits and social position. Selection on observables and unobservables are, moreover, assumed to be positively related and lead to better economic outcomes. Yet, evidence supporting the hypothesis is partial. Using a high-quality nationally representative data set for the UK, with large numbers of immigrants from a wide range different origins and with a rich set of measures not typically found in surveys of immigrants, we provide a comprehensive assessment of the immigrant selectivity hypothesis. The UK has a longstanding history of substantial immigration from both advanced and developing economies, and encompasses a variety of policy regimes, rendering it an empirically and theoretically relevant case. We find that immigrants to the UK are on average educationally selected. However, counter to theoretical assumptions, educational selection is itself not associated with better employment, pay or occupational position. We show that this lack of economic benefits from selection is consistent with a lack of association of educational selectivity with those (typically unobserved) mechanisms assumed to link selection and labour market outcomes: social position and networks, cognitive and non-cognitive skills and mental and physical health. We explain our results by reference to collider bias, that is, that those who migrate are not a random draw from those at a given level of educational selection, and to the expanding literature on transnational class reproduction through migration.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Hilary Term is convened by Bess Bukodi and Colin Mills For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.