Working Paper No. 382: Language and Civic Education Requirements – Gatekeepers or Tools for Economic Integration?

Abstract

Over the 21st century, European governments have introduced language and civic knowledge-tests as requirements for integration stages such as permanent residency and citizenship. Such requirements have been justified as a tool to incentivize host-language acquisition among immigrants and improve integration. By applying the newly developed Language Policy Index for Migrants to recent rounds of the European Social Survey, we explore whether these desired effects exist. We focus on the economic integration of third-country nationals (TCNs), for whom these requirements mainly apply. In a logistic multilevel model with ESS-data from 18 countries, no support is found that stricter requirements improve employment for TCNs in general. However, there is no pattern suggesting that chances of employment are higher in lenient settings either. When incorporating a gender dimension, results suggest that strict requirements may have excluding effects on the employment of male TCNs, while they could benefit that of female TCNs. We relate this to gender-based differences in labor market attachment, occupational choice, and the importance of language proficiency in working tasks. This study joins a rather limited literature evaluating civic integration requirements and adds a contribution regarding the gender aspect, further underscoring the complexity of the effects of these policies.