To work or to study? Postmigration educational investments of adult refugees in Germany – Evidence from a choice experiment

The value of immigrants' human capital for labour market integration

“…Future research in the tradition of country-specific human capital should continue to improve the measures of immigrants' human capital and selection, closely study the processes and mechanisms that affect labour market integration and focus on the intersections where human capital and other explanations meet. Promising recent examples of such studies are on how more fine-grained migration motivations affect economic outcomes for migrants within the free-movement regime of EU (Luthra et al, 2018), how immigrants make their decisions on whether to invest in destination-country education (Damelang & Kosyakova, 2021), and on the interplay of human capital, status, and gender in immigrant self-employment (Webster & Haandrikman, 2020).…”

Post-Migration Education Among Refugees in the Netherlands

“…In the literature on post-migration investments in education, scholars have mainly used the Immigrant Human Capital Investment (IHCI) model, developed by Duleep and Regets (1999) , to derive hypotheses about post-migration investments in education ( Van Tubergen and Van de Werfhorst, 2007 ; Banerjee and Verma, 2012 ; Adamuti-Trache et al, 2013 ; Calvo and Sarkisian, 2015 ; Adamuti-Trache, 2016 ; Damelang and Kosyakova, 2021 ). According to this model, the decision to invest in post-migration schooling depends on the costs and benefits of these investments.…”

“…During their application process they cannot study, and have limited opportunities to work, as mentioned, but also interactions with ethnic majority members are restricted. Moreover, the uncertainty about the outcomes of the procedure may deter refugees from investing in host-country education ( Kosyakova and Brenzel, 2020 ; Damelang and Kosyakova, 2021 ). Studies show that longer stay in an asylum center is negatively associated with employment in the Netherlands ( De Vroome and Van Tubergen, 2010 ; Bakker et al, 2014 ), Switzerland ( Hainmueller et al, 2016 ) and Germany ( Kosyakova and Brenzel, 2020 ).…”

“…On the one hand are findings from previous research, which show that labor market outcomes for immigrants improve in case they have their foreign qualifications formally recognized ( Damelang et al, 2020 ). This can be due to legal barriers to employment being removed ( Damelang and Kosyakova, 2021 ), but also because recognition improves the signaling value of foreign credentials ( Damelang et al, 2020 ). Either way, when refugees have their foreign education recognized, their opportunities in the labour market increase, which makes it less attractive to invest in education.…”

“…First, I look at refugees whereas the literature has focused on post-migration investments among family and labor migrants ( Chiswick and Miller, 1994 ; Khan, 1997 ; Van Tubergen and Van de Werfhorst, 2007 ; Banerjee and Verma, 2012 ; Adamuti-Trache et al, 2013 ; Calvo and Sarkisian, 2015 ; Adamuti-Trache, 2016 ). An exception to this is the study of Damelang and Kosyakova (2021) , who used a choice experiment to study educational preferences among refugees in Germany. I supplement their work by studying actual decisions rather than hypothetical preferences for investments.…”