Final Report Summary - INTEGRATION-POLICY (The Impact of Integration Policies on Immigrant Outcomes: Cross-country Evidence from EU)
Immigrant population residing in the European Union (EU) constitutes close to 4 % of the total population. Large numbers of immigrants arrive in the EU every year in the context of growing demand for highly skilled workers and aging populations. There is an intense debate on immigration both at EU and national levels about how to sustain and manage these worker flows.
The evidence on economic outcomes of immigrants, showing much inferior outcomes for both the first and second generation immigrants compared to native-born individuals across European countries, is an important part of this debate. Discussions around this issue focus on how to improve these outcomes so that benefits from immigration can be maximised both for immigrants and the receiving societies which would also ensure that Europe will continue to be a top destination choice for future immigrants.
Studies in the economics literature underline the important role of immigrant characteristics in determining how much first generation immigrants succeed in the labour market. These studies also show that, within a given host country, there is large heterogeneity in immigrant outcomes by country of origin. The literature that investigates the outcomes of second generation immigrants similarly finds differences by country of origin.
There is also a growing literature investigating immigrants across host countries that report large variation in the outcomes across countries. This may emerge as a result of differences in country of origin composition of immigrants, as well as, different integration policies and institutional structures of the receiving countries. These latter factors receive much less attention in the literature. Important insights on immigrant outcomes can be gained by cross country analysis; however, different country of origin composition of immigrants complicates this type of analysis.
Given the important role of country of origin in deriving cross country differences in immigrant outcomes this project focuses on outcomes of Turkish immigrants across European countries providing a much more homogenous immigrant group. The first objective of this project is to investigate the labour market outcomes of adult Turkish immigrants across European destinations. The project explores how much the demographic and human capital characteristics of immigrants can explain the cross country differences in labour market outcomes of this particular group. The potential role of different integration policies and institutional features in driving the remaining differentials are discussed. The second objective is to study the school success of students with a Turkish origin, exploring the role of parental characteristics and school resources. Studying both the first and the second generation immigrants provides insights on intergenerational transmission of socio economic status through the education channel among immigrants.
The project uses surveys from the five European countries to study the adult labour market outcomes and school success of children. Given the country surveys involve different types of information the data sets were first organized to facilitate a cross country comparison. An investigation of the characteristics of immigrants in these countries shows that immigrants of Turkish origin have lower human capital levels. Unadjusted differences show that Turkish immigrants have in general lower LFP, higher unemployment, lower employment rates and lower earnings levels than both the native born and other immigrants. When the school performance of students in the same destination countries is investigated a similar disadvantage appears for students of Turkish origin.
The study investigates next the role of human capital characteristics in explaining the inferior labour market outcomes of Turkish immigrants. Controlling for age, education and marital status reduces the gap between Turkish immigrants and native born, however, significant gaps remain. For the second generation, differences in achievement between students of Turkish origin and native born students with similar parental education levels are much lower than unadjusted differences. However, second generation Turkish immigrants continue to have lower achievement levels. There is also significant heterogeneity in outcomes of Turkish immigrants across the five destination countries. The variation in Turkish labour market outcomes is largely consistent with different policies of host countries. Turkish immigrants have better outcomes in countries that required strong attachment to the labour market for retention of immigrants in the host country. Importantly, however, children are not doing better in countries where Turkish parents have relatively superior labour market outcomes. In fact, the worst school outcome among children is observed where relatively the most favourable adult labour market outcome is observed. Thus selecting or retaining immigrants with strong linkages to the labour market does not ensure better outcomes for their offspring. This points to the importance of the different features of educational institutions, that may be as important as parental economic outcomes, in shaping the success of immigrant children in schools and consequently in the labour market. These results are relevant both for researchers and policy makers in the field immigration.
The importance of understanding the role of factors that affect immigrant outcomes, especially the role of integration policies, is underlined by the European Council's 'A common agenda for integration' put forward in September 2005 which aims to facilitate the process of developing a distinctive European approach to integration by cooperation and exchange of good practice. This proposed research informs this agenda by providing a comparative assessment of the successes of adult Turkish immigrants, as well as, the successes of their children at different European destinations and highlights the role of host country specific factors that may affect the resulting outcomes.
The evidence on economic outcomes of immigrants, showing much inferior outcomes for both the first and second generation immigrants compared to native-born individuals across European countries, is an important part of this debate. Discussions around this issue focus on how to improve these outcomes so that benefits from immigration can be maximised both for immigrants and the receiving societies which would also ensure that Europe will continue to be a top destination choice for future immigrants.
Studies in the economics literature underline the important role of immigrant characteristics in determining how much first generation immigrants succeed in the labour market. These studies also show that, within a given host country, there is large heterogeneity in immigrant outcomes by country of origin. The literature that investigates the outcomes of second generation immigrants similarly finds differences by country of origin.
There is also a growing literature investigating immigrants across host countries that report large variation in the outcomes across countries. This may emerge as a result of differences in country of origin composition of immigrants, as well as, different integration policies and institutional structures of the receiving countries. These latter factors receive much less attention in the literature. Important insights on immigrant outcomes can be gained by cross country analysis; however, different country of origin composition of immigrants complicates this type of analysis.
Given the important role of country of origin in deriving cross country differences in immigrant outcomes this project focuses on outcomes of Turkish immigrants across European countries providing a much more homogenous immigrant group. The first objective of this project is to investigate the labour market outcomes of adult Turkish immigrants across European destinations. The project explores how much the demographic and human capital characteristics of immigrants can explain the cross country differences in labour market outcomes of this particular group. The potential role of different integration policies and institutional features in driving the remaining differentials are discussed. The second objective is to study the school success of students with a Turkish origin, exploring the role of parental characteristics and school resources. Studying both the first and the second generation immigrants provides insights on intergenerational transmission of socio economic status through the education channel among immigrants.
The project uses surveys from the five European countries to study the adult labour market outcomes and school success of children. Given the country surveys involve different types of information the data sets were first organized to facilitate a cross country comparison. An investigation of the characteristics of immigrants in these countries shows that immigrants of Turkish origin have lower human capital levels. Unadjusted differences show that Turkish immigrants have in general lower LFP, higher unemployment, lower employment rates and lower earnings levels than both the native born and other immigrants. When the school performance of students in the same destination countries is investigated a similar disadvantage appears for students of Turkish origin.
The study investigates next the role of human capital characteristics in explaining the inferior labour market outcomes of Turkish immigrants. Controlling for age, education and marital status reduces the gap between Turkish immigrants and native born, however, significant gaps remain. For the second generation, differences in achievement between students of Turkish origin and native born students with similar parental education levels are much lower than unadjusted differences. However, second generation Turkish immigrants continue to have lower achievement levels. There is also significant heterogeneity in outcomes of Turkish immigrants across the five destination countries. The variation in Turkish labour market outcomes is largely consistent with different policies of host countries. Turkish immigrants have better outcomes in countries that required strong attachment to the labour market for retention of immigrants in the host country. Importantly, however, children are not doing better in countries where Turkish parents have relatively superior labour market outcomes. In fact, the worst school outcome among children is observed where relatively the most favourable adult labour market outcome is observed. Thus selecting or retaining immigrants with strong linkages to the labour market does not ensure better outcomes for their offspring. This points to the importance of the different features of educational institutions, that may be as important as parental economic outcomes, in shaping the success of immigrant children in schools and consequently in the labour market. These results are relevant both for researchers and policy makers in the field immigration.
The importance of understanding the role of factors that affect immigrant outcomes, especially the role of integration policies, is underlined by the European Council's 'A common agenda for integration' put forward in September 2005 which aims to facilitate the process of developing a distinctive European approach to integration by cooperation and exchange of good practice. This proposed research informs this agenda by providing a comparative assessment of the successes of adult Turkish immigrants, as well as, the successes of their children at different European destinations and highlights the role of host country specific factors that may affect the resulting outcomes.