既存移民文獻大多是探討經濟移民,本文則是探討政治移民。本文比較1949年後由中國大陸移入臺灣的移民第二代相對於臺灣本地閩南人和客家人的薪資差異。本研究發現父親爲第一代移民的身分和父母族群婚配組成的不同對於子女薪資並無顯著的影響,移民子女融入勞動市場的速度,與母親是否爲本地人無關,但是與母親的教育程度有正向顯著的關係。本地人在公部門工作或是使用國語有顯著的薪資溢酬。其次,大陸移民與本地人之薪資差異顯著爲正但是幅度不大,造成薪資差異的主要來源是可解釋的部份(生產力的差異),無法解釋的部份(歧視)不僅是非常小,且結果顯示本地人在勞動市場中有工作上的優勢。族群內之世代薪資差異不但顯著,而且大陸移民和本地人族群間之世代薪資差異也非常明顯。但是大陸移民和本地人間之世代薪資差異會隨著出生世代的年輕化而縮減。
Most existing research on immigrants has focused on immigrants with economic motivation. This paper fills the gap by studying political immigrants to Taiwan. We compare the labor market performance between the generations of the immigrants from China to Taiwan after 1949 and natives in Taiwan. Natives are represented by Hokkien and Hakka. Three main findings are as follows. First, the status of an immigrant's father being a first-generation mainlander and/or an immigrant's mother being a native has no significant effect on earnings of adult children. Instead, the status of being a more highly educated mother affects earnings of those second-generation children significantly. Meanwhile, as compared to their immigrant counterparts, natives have higher earnings if they work in the public sector or if they have language proficiency in Mandarin. Second, different from other countries, immigrants on average have wages higher than natives in Taiwan. The wage differential can be almost fully explained by explainable factors, the productivity differential in the labor market, rather than unexplainable or ”discrimination” factors. Finally, wage differentials within a specific ethnic cohort and between immigrants and natives across cohorts are significant, but the earnings gap between immigrants and natives have shrunk for younger cohorts.