BACKGROUND
Existing research has emphasized immigration policy and social capital as two crucial elements of reception that influence immigrant labor market outcomes. While much attention has been paid to these two factors in isolation, a limited body of empirical work has examined how they intersect, specifically how social capital influences the economic integration of immigrants legally precluded from the formal labor market.

OBJECTIVE
Our goal is to examine the extent to which immigrant legal status conditions economic integration in the United States and whether neighborhood social capital moderates this relationship.

METHODS
This study relies on a large probability sample of individuals residing in Los Angeles County that directly ascertains the legal status of immigrants. We employ inverse probability of treatment-weighted linear regressions to compare the labor market outcomes of undocumented immigrants to those of immigrants with varying forms of legal status and to examine how neighborhood social capital moderates the link between legal status and economic attainment.

CONCLUSIONS
We find two distinct modes of economic incorporation: one of steady work and higher wages among immigrants with citizenship status, and one of lower earnings and greater reliance on self-employment among immigrants in the country without documentation. Our results suggest that neighborhood social capital does not improve the labor market prospects of undocumented immigrants and in some cases may penalize them.



中文翻译：

---

探索法律地位和社区社会资本对洛杉矶移民经济融合的作用（作者：Ashley Muchow，Robert Bozick）

背景
现有研究强调移民政策和社会资本是影响移民劳动力市场结果的两个关键因素。虽然孤立地关注这两个因素，但有限的实证工作研究了它们如何相互作用，特别是社会资本如何影响合法地排除在正式劳动力市场之外的移民的经济融合。

目标
我们的目标是检查移民法律地位在多大程度上影响了美国的经济一体化，以及社区社会资本是否会调节这种关系。

方法
这项研究依赖于居住在洛杉矶县的个人的大概率样本，这些样本直接确定移民的合法身份。我们采用治疗加权线性回归的逆概率来比较无证移民与具有不同形式法律地位的移民的劳动力市场结果，并研究邻里社会资本如何调节法律地位和经济成就之间的联系。

结论
我们发现了两种不同的经济整合模式：一种是具有公民身份的移民的稳定工作和更高的工资，另一种是没有证件的移民的收入较低和更多地依赖自营职业。我们的研究结果表明，社区社会资本不会改善无证移民的劳动力市场前景，在某些情况下可能会惩罚他们。