Migrants' subjective welbeing in Europe: does relative income matter?

This paper contributes to the growing field of inquiry that investigates migrants’ subjective well-being by analysing the role of income, relative to two reference groups: natives and other migrants. Using data collected by the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2018, we constructed two measures of economic distance to compare each migrant’s economic situation with that of natives and other migrants with similar characteristics. Our results indicate that when the disadvantage between the migrant and the reference groups becomes smaller, eventually becoming an advantage, the migrant’s life satisfaction increases. This relationship is stronger when migrants’ income is examined relative to with natives than when compared with migrants’, suggesting that, for migrants’ well-being, upward comparison is more important than downward comparison. We also show that the relationship between relative income and subjective well-being is stronger for second-generation migrants and for those with more formal education. Finally, we explore how subjective measures both at the individual (feelings about one’s own economic condition) and societal (feelings about the national socio-economic-institutional condition) levels can moderate the relationship between relative income and subjective well-being.