Project Details
Projekt
Language-Skill Investments and Migration Decisions
Subject Area
Economic Policy, Applied Economics
Term
from 2015 to 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270886786
Migration has become an increasingly important aspect of globalization over the last decades. A factor which is likely to be important for most migrants is language skills. Empirical research in the area of language and migration is, however, constrained by the scarcity of high-quality data, in particular individual level information on pre-migration language learning, language skills and migration intentions. Furthermore, investment in language skills and investments in different types of education are often interdependent. More generally, understanding language-skill investment also sheds light on the role of education investment on migration decisions.Our project will draw on and add to three separate but interrelated strands of literature: (1) pre-migration adult-age language learning, (2) general and gender-specific migration choice and (3) investment in internationally applicable and country-specific education in a migration context. For this, surveys will be conducted among participants of language courses offered by the Goethe-Institut which is an important provider of German language courses abroad. In 2015 alone, there were about 272,000 course participants worldwide. Surveys among university students will complement these surveys. The data will contain individual level information on migration intentions and previous migration experience as well as on language learning, including the reasons of learning or not learning, and on the level of existing language skills. Furthermore, there will be detailed information on the socio-economic background, in particular the level of education and the type of qualification. We propose four studies: The first study will investigate the reasons of language learning in the home country and its determinants. The second study will examine the relationship between migration intentions on the one side, and language skills, personal and country characteristics on the other side. Focusing on intentions instead of realized migration helps to better asses possible migration barriers. The third study will test if migration is related to the international applicability of acquired education. The fourth study aims at contributing to the understanding of language-skill investments in the presence of potentially gender-specific migration incentives. Given the role of language proficiency for integration, a better understanding of individual motives for acquiring language skills and individual migration intentions will allow policies like language course offers and legal language requirements to be better targeted at different groups of migrants even before their migration. This will be a joint project by the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and the ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
