Over-education among A8 migrants in the UK

I present new evidence on the incidence and wage associations of over-education among migrants to the UK from the ‘A8’ EU accession countries of Central and Eastern Europe from 2004-2011. Using the Labour Force Survey, I employ a novel strategy to maximise the number of migrants drawn from the dataset over the period of interest, creating a survey sample of A8 migrants of unprecedented size. I also use a new method of classifying education attained outside the UK, which takes account of different European education systems. I find that A8 migrants face a substantially higher risk of over-education in the UK than other recent EU migrants, and that this additional risk remains after taking account of observed characteristics. I argue that this result is driven by unobserved differences between the groups, arising from distinct self-selection processes associated with the institutional context of the EU accession. I also find that in non-graduate occupations, the wage penalties faced by A8 migrants in the UK are of such strength that even the over-educated are paid less than matched UK nationals. Moreover, A8 migrants are concentrated in a particular sub-group of occupations, where higher wages are not available for the over-educated.