Contribution of Characteristics to the Migrant-Native Gaps

Returning now to the paper’s main question of what can explain migrant-native gaps in post-school transitions, Table 3.5 shows how these gaps change after successively controlling for vari-ous blocks of variables.

Starting from a “raw” model (Table 3.5, columns 1 and 5), I first add parental background vari-ables (Table 3.5, columns 2 and 6). The migrants’ less favourable parental background completely explains their lower chance of entering tertiary education and a small part of their higher risk of remaining without qualified training. The next specification (columns 3 and 7) further conditions on skills (school grades, cognitive test scores in reading and mathematics, and noncognitive skills) as well as school fixed effects. For boys, this generates a polarization of migrants’ educational choices: compared to natives of similar background and skill, migrants are more likely to remain without qualified training (+7.6 ppts.), less likely to attend vocational education (-11.5 ppts.) and more likely to attend academic education (+3.9 ppts). For girls, parental background and skills explain the complete migrant-native differential in terms of remaining without qualified training.

However, similar to migrant boys, migrant girls also show a higher rate of tertiary attendance (+2.7 ppts.) and a lower rate of vocational attendance (-2.0 ppts.) than their background and skills would predict. Finally, controlling for career plans (Table 3.5, columns 4 and 8) explains a large part of the remaining gaps for all three transitions. While among boys, there remains an “unexplained”

gap in the order of 4.3 ppts. when considering the risk of remaining without qualified training, it is substantially smaller in magnitude than without controlling for career plans.

Table 3.6 then documents that the previous results, which have been obtained for the pooled sample of all school leavers, are actually driven by very different patterns in the bottom and the top of the skill distribution. This table shows separate estimations by whether a pupil left school without a higher secondary degree (in Panel A) or with a higher secondary degree (in Panel B).

First consider the results for less skilled individuals who do not have the option to attend tertiary education. As discussed above, the migrant-native gaps are particularly large in this group (+20.5 ppts. for boys and +12.2 ppts. for girls). For boys, the migrants’ higher risk of remaining without qualified training can only partly be explained by parental background and skills (Table 3.6, Panel A, column 3). However, the remaining gap can be explained to a large extent by the fact that less skilled migrants have more ambitious career plans and are applying to vocational education to a much lesser extent than less skilled natives. After controlling for all characteristics, there remains a insignificant “residual” migrant-native gap of +4.8 ppts. For girls, conditioning on parental back-ground and skills is sufficient to explain most of the migrants’ higher risk of remaining without qualified training (Table 3.6, Panel A, column 7).

ant-NativeGapsinEducationalTransitions79

Table 3.5: Migrant-native gaps in transitions, first year after secondary school (all school leavers)

Boys Girls

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Estimated gap between migrants and natives in the transition to...

No qualified training 0.153^∗∗∗ 0.138^∗∗∗ 0.076^∗∗∗ 0.043^∗ 0.080^∗∗∗ 0.062^∗∗∗ -0.007 -0.002 (0.022) (0.022) (0.023) (0.022) (0.019) (0.019) (0.021) (0.020) Vocational training -0.121^∗∗∗ -0.137^∗∗∗ -0.115^∗∗∗ -0.059^∗∗∗ -0.015 -0.041^∗∗ -0.020 -0.001

(0.022) (0.022) (0.022) (0.021) (0.021) (0.021) (0.020) (0.019)

Tertiary education -0.032 -0.001 0.039^∗∗∗ 0.016 -0.065^∗∗∗ -0.021 0.027^∗ 0.003

(0.020 (0.019) (0.014 ) (0.014) (0.018) (0.016 ) (0.014) (0.014)

Parental background X X X X X X

Skills and school fixed effects X X X X

Career plans X X

N 5090 5090 5090 5090 5078 5078 5078 5078

Note: This table is based on Linear Probability Models of whether a pupil makes the respective transition in the first year after leaving secondary school, controlling for a migrant dummy and different sets of covariates. Standard errors in parentheses, clustered at the school level. ^∗p<0.10,^∗∗

p<0.05,^∗∗∗p<0.01. Source: NEPS SC4, own calculation.

3.Migrant-NativeGapsinEducationalTransitions

Boys Girls

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

A. Pupils without higher secondary degree

Estimated gap between migrants and natives in the transition to...

No qualified training 0.205^∗∗∗ 0.187^∗∗∗ 0.103^∗∗∗ 0.048 0.122^∗∗∗ 0.104^∗∗∗ 0.031 0.028 (0.027) (0.027) (0.031) (0.029) (0.025) (0.026) (0.030) (0.030) Vocational education -0.205^∗∗∗ -0.187^∗∗∗ -0.103^∗∗∗ -0.048 -0.122^∗∗∗ -0.104^∗∗∗ -0.031 -0.028

(0.027) (0.027) (0.031) (0.029) (0.025) (0.026) (0.030) (0.030)

N 3013 3013 3013 3013 2450 2450 2450 2450

B. Pupils with higher secondary degree

Estimated gap between migrants and natives in the transition to...

No qualified training 0.034 0.035 0.007 0.006 0.003 0.005 -0.063^∗ -0.046

(0.032) (0.034) (0.039) (0.039) (0.026) (0.027) (0.034) (0.034) Vocational education -0.080^∗∗∗ -0.098^∗∗∗ -0.119^∗∗∗ -0.055^∗ -0.005 -0.018 -0.003 0.036

(0.026) (0.026) (0.029) (0.028) (0.025) (0.026) (0.029) (0.024)

Tertiary education 0.047 0.063^∗ 0.112^∗∗∗ 0.049 0.002 0.012 0.066^∗ 0.010

(0.037) (0.038) (0.041) (0.041) (0.028) (0.029) (0.034) (0.033)

N 2077 2077 2077 2077 2628 2628 2628 2628

Parental background X X X X X X

Skills and school FE X X X X

Career plans X X

Note: This table is based on Linear Probability Models of whether a pupil makes the respective transition in the first year after leaving secondary school, controlling for a migrant dummy and different sets of covariates. Standard errors in parentheses, clustered at the school level.^∗p<0.10,^∗∗ p<0.05,^∗∗∗p<0.01. Source: NEPS SC4, own calculation.

The patterns look different when considering school leavers with a higher secondary degree in Panel B of Table 3.6. For this group, the migrant-native difference in taking up tertiary education turns strongly positive when parental background and skills are added to the regression (to +11.2 ppts. for boys, and +6.6 ppts. for girls). In other words, high-skilled migrant school leavers of both genders “swim upstream” and have much higher tertiary education attendance rates than their family background and cognitive skills would predict. The migrants’ more ambitious career plans can to a large part resolve this puzzle.

An alternative strategy is to conduct a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition which estimates the contribution of each block of variables holding the others fixed.³³ Results are shown in Appendix Table 3.A3. For pupils without higher secondary degree, the migrants’ higher risk of remaining without tertiary education (+20.5 ppts. for boys and +12.2 ppts for girls) is explained both by cognitive skills (+6.8 for boys, +7.1 ppts. for girls) and career plans (+7.2 ppts. for boys, +3.5 ppts. for girls). As discussed above, there is an unexplained gap for boys, but almost all of the gaps are explained for girls. For pupils with higher secondary degree, migrants’ worse endowment with cognitive skills works against them pursuing tertiary education (in the order of -2.8 ppts. for boys and -5.7 ppts. for girls), while their more academic career plans work in the opposite direction (with an effect of +4.2 ppts. for boys, and +3.6 ppts. for girls).

To sum up, I find that while migrants are more likely to have academic career aspirations and expectations and are less likely to apply for vocational training, these differences have very dif-ferent effects for pupils at the bottom and the top of the skill distribution. One the one hand, the high aspirations tend to divert less skilled migrants (in particular boys) from vocational training as a more viable alternative, resulting in them “swimming downstream” and having a higher risk of remaining without qualified training than similarly skilled natives. On the other hand, high aspi-rations allow the high-skilled migrants to “swim upstream” and participate in tertiary education to a greater extent than their skills would predict.