Relative education of recent refugees in Germany and the Middle East: Is selectivity reflected in migration and destination decisions?
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| Author | Jörg Welker |
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12853 |
International Migration. 2022;60:65–80.
|
65
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/imig
INTRODUCTION
The numbers of fo rced migrants increased gl obally over the past decade . Many of these migrants are likel y to stay
in their countries of arrival in the long term and constitute an important part of receiving societies. Among other
factors, e ducation is known to play an essent ial role in migrants’ integrati on. To assess their inte gration prospects,
we need to know what t hey brought with them: What k ind of education did they a cquire in their countrie s of origin?
Received: 13 June 2 020
|
Revised: 8 Februa ry 2021
|
Accepted: 23 March 20 21
DOI: 10 .1111/imig .12853
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Relative education of recent refugees in Germany
and the Middle East: Is selectivity reflected in
migration and destination decisions?
Jörg Welker
© 2021 The Author s. Internation al Migration pub lished by John Wile y & Sons Ltd on behalf of I nternational Or ganization for Mi gration.
Leibniz Inst itute for Educatio nal
Trajectories, Bamberg, Germany
Correspondence
Jörg Welker, Leibniz I nstitute for
Educationa l Trajectories, Wilh elmsplatz 3,
96047 Bamberg, Germany.
Email: joerg.welker@lifbi.de
Funding information
The work origi nates from the proje ct
ReGES, whi ch is funded by the Ger man
Federal Mini stry of Educatio n and Research
under grant n umber FLUCHT03. Th e author
is solely resp onsible for the conte nt of this
publication.
Abstract
In this paper, relative education profiles of recent refu-
gees arriving to Germany from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan
are described and compared to the profiles of Syrians in
Jordan and Lebanon and of internally displaced Iraqis.
Relative education d escribes a migrant's position in t he ed-
ucational distribution of the orig in population. For recent
refugees, relative e ducation could be reflected in the de ci-
sion of where to migrate: those who are relatively better
educated may be more ab le to reach a distant destination.
The empirical analyses use data from the project ‘ReGES
– Refugees in the German Educational System’, the IAB-
BAMF- S OEP Survey of Refugees, the A rab Barometer and
Multiple Indicato r Cluster Surveys (MICS). The f indings
suggest that on average, Syrians and Afghans in Germany
and Syrians in Jordan are positively selected on education,
while Syrians in Lebano n and internally displaced Iraqis ap-
pear slightly negatively selected. The findings for Iraqis in
Germany show mixed evidence.
This is an open ac cess article und er the terms of the Crea tive Commons Attr ibution-NonCo mmercial-NoDer ivs License, which
permits us e and distributio n in any medium, provid ed the original wor k is properly cited , the use is non-comme rcial and no
modifications or adaptations are made.
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WELKER
While educat ion is usually referred to in abs olute terms, that is, whic h educational qualifi cations an individual
has attained , this type of assessment m ay not draw a complete picture of r efugees’1. educational background be-
cause the mean ing of education is high ly context- dependent. T his points to a more rela tive character of ed ucation.
For example, in a country where the average educational level is lower, an intermediate- level degree could stand
for a relatively better ed ucation than in a country where most peop le obtain at least such type of degree (Spörl ein
& Kristen , 2019a). Relative educat ion describes h ow a migrant's ed ucational attai nment compares to the educa-
tional distri bution of the origin popul ation.
Those who migrate are usually selected on education; they ‘are not a random sample of the population at
origin’ (Lee, 1966, 56). Migr ant groups are often bet ter educated than the o rigin population (e.g. Feli ciano, 2005),
which is commonly described as positive educational selectivity, while negative selectivity characterizes migrant
groups that are ed ucated below the average leve l in their origin countrie s. Recent studies have moved away f rom
treating sele ctivity as a group- level characteris tic and have shown that migrant group s are usually composed of
shares of relative ly better educated as we ll as relatively less educ ated individuals (Ichou , 2014).
This paper aims to co ntribute to this liter ature by describing an d comparing the prof iles of relative educ ation of
recent refugees wh o migrated from Syria, Iraq or Afghan istan to Germany or destinat ions in the Middle East. Few
researcher s have explored educat ional selectivit y among forced migra nts in detail. Bec ause forced migrants m ove
for different r easons than other migra nts, they may systemat ically differ in thei r relative education pr ofiles. Some
studies consid er these differences in mig ration motivation rather i mplicitly by contrasting t he categories of eco-
nomic and political migra nts (e.g. Feliciano , 2005; Lessard- Philli ps et al., 2014). Howeve r, the specific con ditions
that make politic al migrants migrate ca n vary greatly and may refl ect in specific selec tivity patterns .
In one of the first contributions describing selectivity patterns within a specific refugee group, Lukic and
Nikitovic ( 2004) found that refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina who moved to Serbia are on average be tter
educated than both t he population at origin an d internally displaced perso ns (IDPs) in Bosnia and H erzegovina.
Contributio ns that explicitly focus on th e select ive migrati on of recent humanitarian migrants coming mostly
from Middle Eastern countrie s have notably be en made by Buber- Ennser et al. (2016) for Au stria and Lange and
Pfeiffer (2019) for Ge rmany. Both st udies found that on ave rage, migrants are bet ter educated than the popu-
lation at origin. Spör lein and Kr isten (2019b) confir m these fin dings but a lso show that positive educ ational se-
lectivit y is less pronounced among re cent refugees than among mos t other migrant groups who ma inly move for
economic reaso ns. In this paper, the education al selectivity of recent r efugees from the Middle Eas t in Germany
is described us ing two different data set s to contribute to robust knowled ge about the educational bac kground
of these groups.
Furthermor e, only a few studies have consid ered the relati on between sel ective migration and the selec tion
of a certain des tination in the context of forced migration. If there is a relationship b etween relative education
and the desti nation where forced migrant s end up, then this could be high ly relevant for these migra nts’ societal
integration. Aksoy and Pout vaara (2019) show t hat recent refugee s in various Eu ropean countries are positively
selected on education and that among these European destinations, countries with economic incentives such
as a high GDP per capit a are more li kely to attrac t highly educate d refugees. On a more global level, individual s
who are relatively better educated could have more options in terms of where to migrate. Those who reached
Europe may be relat ively better educated than t hose who sought refuge closer to th eir place of origin. Spörlein
et al. (2020) fin d support for this assumption by contrasting Syrian ref ugees in G ermany, Lebanon and Jorda n.
This paper aims to contribute to these findings on educational selection among short- distance and long- distance
refugees by inclu ding further data so urces and an additional com parison group: IDPs in Ira q.
A further cont ribution of this paper re lates to a methodologica l issue. Research on educ ational selectivit y has
rarely pa id attention to the regional or igin of migrants (see Spörlein & Kristen, 2019a, 2019b). In less develo ped
countries such a s Syria, Iraq and Afghan istan, infrastr uctural conditio ns may be unequal across re gions and lead to
disparities in educational at tainment. For instance, an intermediate- level degree could represent a relatively ad-
vanced educat ion in a region where the ave rage educationa l level is low because of lim ited opportunit ies. While an
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