Following the earlier “Catching Up” report on the closing of the educational gap between migrants’ children and the domestic-born school population (VU IN&R 117), the OECD has now published a report “Skills on the Move” examining the fact-base of the perception that non-Western migrants are lowly educated and want to stay unemployed – on state support.
The report shows that one-third of those foreign-born in OECD countries have higher education qualifications and less than 25% have only primary education or lower. Most immigrants have jobs – at comparable rates as domestic workers; but over-qualification is much more prevalent among immigrants. Interestingly, the Aurora countries show a relatively large gap in literacy and numeracy between domestics and immigrants (the UK less than the others). The same applies to the difference between domestics and immigrants in problem-solving proficiency, although that gap is smaller across the OECD countries.
The report looks at many other aspects in detail and is a rich source of comparative information on a highly relevant and contentious subject.
