Faced with the demographic shift to a smaller and older labour force, the recruitment of migrants and their successful integration into the labour force is an essential challenge for all European countries. This article discusses the immigrant-native gap regarding the risk of overeducation for 28 European countries on the basis of the EU-LFS 2021 ad hoc module. Immigrants' higher overeducation risks are interpreted as the result of processes of legal closure as well as statistical and taste-based discrimination. Higher overeducation rates of third country nationals (TCN) in contrast to EU migrants indicate that EU citizenship reduces discrimination and facilitates the recognition of educational certificates - they are skill-preserving devices for EU citizens but not for TCN. The large overeducation rates in particular in Southern Europe can be explained by segmented labour markets with higher unemployment and lower skill requirements increase overeducation risks, in particular for TCN. Moreover, it can be shown that EU citizenship, a higher educational level of the population, and more inclusive labour markets facilitate the occupational integration of immigrants.

ABSTRACT In the wake of the Great Recession, youth labour market integration has become a central issue in both national as well as EU policy, e.g. in connection with the European Youth Guarantee. In this context, public employment services (PES) are considered central actors in promoting youth labour market integration. However, since international comparative analyses are scarce and the role of institutions and policies is thus rarely explicated, it is still an open empirical question whether and in which context PES can fulfil such a key role. Therefore, we analyse two questions based on the EU-LFS 2016 ad-hoc module : (i) How relevant is PES support to young people with different educational levels in finding a job? (ii) How do differences in the educational system and in labour market policies shape the relevance of PES support across Europe? This study illustrates that in countries with highly stratified, standardised and vocational-specific educational systems the relevance of PES is comparatively high in particular for the low-qualified. Thus, those countries have good reasons to strengthen PES to support the most disadvantaged and to combat labour market inequalities.