IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/soinre/v170y2023i1d10.1007_s11205-023-03069-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Certifying Foreign Qualifications Lead to Better Immigrant Skills Utilization?

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Pecoraro

    (University of Neuchatel)

  • Massimiliano Tani

    (University of New South Wales, IZA, and GLO)

Abstract

Using a novel panel dataset on recent immigrants in Switzerland, we study the relationship between the degree of skills utilization, the foreign-acquired education and its certification in the host country. We find that the relationship with foreign education is negative, especially when acquired in a non-EU country, in line with the literature documenting the imperfect international transferability of human capital. Obtaining a “Certificate of Equivalence” in Switzerland makes this relationship statistically non-significant: in other words, the certification enables immigrants to enjoy the same degree of skills utilization in the Swiss labour market as those with Swiss education. Additional results suggest that immigrants with a foreign but not Swiss-certified education keep the degree of skill utilization as high as it would be if they were Swiss educated when they obtain a job contract or job offer before migrating to Switzerland. These findings are robust to controlling for self-selection on unobserved characteristics.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Pecoraro & Massimiliano Tani, 2023. "Does Certifying Foreign Qualifications Lead to Better Immigrant Skills Utilization?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 170(1), pages 291-322, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:170:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-023-03069-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-023-03069-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-023-03069-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11205-023-03069-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Immigration; Qualifications; Recognition; Skills utilization; Labour market;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:170:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-023-03069-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.