Greater local supply of language courses improves refugees’ labor market integration

Utilizing the German residential allocation and residency obligation policies, which can be regarded as a natural experiment, we investigate the causal effect of the local supply of language courses on refugees’ labor market integration. By restricting refugees’ initial and post-arrival regional mobility, these policies allow us to circumvent the potential problems of initial and post-arrival residential selection. Moreover, we examine the intermediary outcomes – language proficiency, language course completion and certification, and contacts with natives – through which the local opportunity structure of language courses shape refugees’ economic integration. Our results reveal that the local supply of language courses positively affects refugees’ employment probability, and this effect persists over the duration of stay. We further find that greater supply of language courses in the assigned county increases probability of learning the German language, completing the course and receiving language certificates. From a policy perspective, our findings imply that the local provision of language courses should be considered in refugees’ residential allocation to facilitate immigrants’ integration. This is because limited access to such courses can delay host country language learning, language certificate obtainment, and labor market entry, thus slowing the integration of recently arrived immigrants.

借助德国住宅分配与居住义务政策，该政策可被视为一项自然实验，我们探讨了当地语言课程供应对难民劳动力市场融入的因果效应。通过限制难民在初始和抵达后的地区流动性，这些政策使我们能够规避初始和抵达后居住选择的潜在问题。此外，我们考察了中介结果——语言能力、语言课程完成与认证，以及与当地居民的接触——这些结果通过当地语言课程的机会结构塑造了难民的经济发展融入。我们的研究结果表明，当地语言课程的供应对难民就业概率产生积极影响，并且这种影响在难民逗留期间持续存在。我们进一步发现，分配县内语言课程供应的增加提升了学习德语、完成课程并获得语言证书的概率。从政策角度来看，我们的发现表明，在难民居住分配中应考虑当地语言课程的提供，以促进移民的融入。这是因为对这些课程的有限访问可能会延迟东道国语言学习、语言证书获取和劳动力市场进入，从而减缓新到移民的融入过程。