Growing up in Ethnic Enclaves: Language Proficiency and Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children

Alexander Danzer, Carsten Feuerbaum, Marc Piopiunik and Ludger Woessmann

No 180, Working Papers from Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE)

Abstract: Does a high regional concentration of immigrants of the same ethnicity affect immigrant children’s acquisition of host-country language skills and educational attainment? We exploit the exogenous placement of guest workers from five ethnicities across German regions during the 1960s and 1970s in a model with region and ethnicity fixed effects. Our results indicate that exposure to a higher own-ethnic concentration impairs immigrant children’s host-country language proficiency and increases school dropout. A key mediating factor for this effect is parents’ lower speaking proficiency in the host-country language, whereas inter-ethnic contacts with natives and economic conditions do not play a role.

Keywords: immigrant children; ethnic concentration; language; education; guest workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 J15 J61 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2018-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://bgpe.cms.rrze.uni-erlangen.de/files/2023/0 ... migrant-Children.pdf First version, 2018 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Growing up in ethnic enclaves: language proficiency and educational attainment of immigrant children (2022)
Working Paper: Growing up in Ethnic Enclaves: Language Proficiency and Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children (2018)
Working Paper: Growing up in Ethnic Enclaves: Language Proficiency and Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children (2018)
Working Paper: Growing up in Ethnic Enclaves: Language Proficiency and Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children (2018)
Working Paper: Growing up in Ethnic Enclaves: Language Proficiency and Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children (2018)
Working Paper: Growing Up in Ethnic Enclaves: Language Proficiency and Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children (2018)
Working Paper: Growing Up in Ethnic Enclaves: Language Proficiency and Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bav:wpaper:180_danzerfeuerbaumpiopiunikwoessmann

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anton Barabasch ().