Integrated vs. Separated Schooling for Refugee Children: Long-Term Effects on Education and Assimilation

Does direct integration into native schools or temporary placement in separate schools better promote the education and cultural assimilation of refugee children? In the Netherlands, primary-school-aged refugee children are placed in either integrated or separated schools depending on their randomly assigned municipality. By contrast, all secondary-school-aged arrivals are initially separated. We exploit this institutional setting in two-way fixed-effects models with age-at-arrival and municipality fixed effects. Using rich administrative data, we find that integrated schooling reduces educational attainment at age 18, particularly for children of lower-educated parents. At the same time, integrated schooling increases cultural assimilation, measured by hormonal-contraceptive usage among teenage women, particularly for children from non-Muslim-majority countries. A distinctive feature of separated schooling that may account for its positive educational effect is that it allows employing teachers specialized in native-language teaching for non-native speakers.