This article explores how the full liberalization of migration as a consequence of Austria's European economic area (EEA) accession in 1994 impacted on the education structure of migrants to Austria. To identify the effects of this policy change, use is made of the fact that only migrants from EEA member states were affected, while third country citizens were not. Robust evidence is found that the share of low educated permanent migrants from the EEA to Austria reduced relative to the share of low educated permanent migrants from other countries after Austria's EEA accession. This suggests that liberalizing migration may be an effective way to improve the skill structure of migrants in countries with a high share of low-skilled migrants.
We ask how reform of migration law intended to increase the selectivity of migration (the so-called integration agreement regulation in 2003) in Austria impacted on the education structure of migrants to Austria. To identify the effects of this reform, we use the fact that it applied only to migrants from third countries and not those from EEA-countries. We find no compelling evidence that this regulation improved the education structure of migrants to Austria. Our interpretation of this is that the implicit positive impact of the reforms on the education structure of migrants was countervailed by the increased restrictiveness of the migration regime overall, or that other developments in the migration regime were more important for changes in education structure in the time period considered.
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