Does Foreign Language Proficiency Foster Migration of Young Individuals within the European Union?

Ainoa Aparicio and Zoe Kuehn ()

No 8250, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Speaking the language of the host country eases migrants' integration and tends to boost their economic success in the country of destination. However, the decision to acquire language skills may in itself be determined by the intention to migrate. In addition, conditional on being a migrant, the relation between language skills and migrants' integration and economic success goes both ways. Using data on the study of foreign languages during compulsory education in European countries, we test whether and how much language proficiency determines migration flows across Europe. The European Union with basically unlimited labor mobility and pronounced differences in youth unemployment rates provides an ideal testing ground for our hypothesis. We find that speaking the language of a country increases the likelihood to migrate to that country almost fivefold.

Keywords: return to skills; language proficiency; migration; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I20 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2014-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - published in: B.-A. Wickstroem and M. Gazzola (eds.), The Economics of Language Policy, MIT Press, 2016

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