Occupational outcomes of internal migration: The importance of gender and migration roles.

In this article we explore men´s and women´s occupational outcomes after internal migration using panel data from Britain. Our theoretical framework combines traditional individual and household migration decision models with an innovative structural approach. This highlights the role within migration processes of the systematic separation of men and women across occupations with diverging characteristics and career prospects. We add to existing literature by focusing explicitly on individuals' post-migration occupational characteristics and sex-composition, and thus depart from the traditional (restrictive) focus on wages and employment status. Two types of migration-related occupational outcomes are of particular interest: (i) between-individual differences on post-migration occupational characteristics, and (ii) within-individual differences in pre- and post-migration occupational characteristics. Sex differences on the processes that lead to migration related occupational outcomes are explored as well as those which arise from migration roles in family moves, a pervasive structural factor on gendered migration outcomes. The empirical analysis consists of panel regression models estimated using individual-level data from the British Household Panel Survey combined with occupational-level data from the UK Labour Force Survey.