In addition to the family-level context of the decision-making process to migrate, the literature has discussed the implications of interethnic marriage for immigrants’ assimilation. It has been argued that the extent of interethnic marriages can serve not only as an indicator of ethnic relations and intergroup social distance, but also as a proxy of assimilation by immigrant groups (Qian and Lichter, 2007), sometimes referred to as “the final stage of assimilation” (Gordon, 1964).
Becker (1973) developed a model of the marriage market in which the final outcome in the search for a partner would encompass some similarities within couples in terms of certain traits, including ethnic - racial background, education and religion. These similarities
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Based on this theory, inter-ethnic marriage will tock place only when the majority group member will receive a higher socioeconomic status as a result of this marriage. That is, members of an ethnic or racial group will exchange their low prestige by offering a high socioeconomic status (mealy education and earnings). Some empirical findings support this theory by showing that black husbands trade their socioeconomic status with white wives (Heer, 1974; Monahan, 1976; Shoen and Wooldredge, 1989) and that highly educated migrants have higher levels of intermarriage (Dribe and Lundh, 2008), while other studies do not support it (Rosenfeld, …show more content…
There are several reasons why intermarriage may effects immigrants’ labor market outcomes. First, marriage to a native accelerate migrants acquisition of specific human capital by improving their language abilities and knowledge of the host country’s culture (Furtado and Trejo, 2012; Nekby, 2010). Moreover, since social networks have an important role in the labor market; marriage to a native can have a decisive impact on the labor market opportunities of migrants (Nekby, 2010; Furtado and Theodoropoulos, 2010). Finally, in the case of undocumented immigrants, intermarriage to a native can affect wage and employment if they change the legal status of the migrant (Furtado and Trejo, 2012; Chi and Drewianka, 2014). However, it has been argued that the relationship between intermarriages and assimilation is spurious because intermarried immigrants are a selected group from all married immigrants (Kantarevic, 2004) and may possess some unmeasured attributes that affect earnings positively (Furtado and Song,