Linguistic proximity and inequality in returns to migrant skills

Jonas Feld and Joanna Tyrowicz
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Jonas Feld: IAAEU

No 102, GRAPE Working Papers from GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics

Abstract: We provide novel evidence on the inequality of returns to immigrant skills in hosting economies. Although migrant wage gaps are well established in the literature, less is known about the origins of their heterogeneity. We propose a potential rationale for this gap related to the linguistic proximity between the destination and origin countries. We exploit individual-level data from nine diverse destination countries, with migrants from a highly heterogeneous group of origin countries, for both recent and long-term migrants. We find that lower linguistic proximity between origin and destination is associated with a higher average wage penalty for highly skilled migrants and a substantially lower position in the wage distribution.

Keywords: migration; linguistic proximity; returns to education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I23 I26 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-mig
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fme:wpaper:102

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