Conference Programme (PDF, 1019KB) - Trinity College Dublin

abstracts by stream and session
By examining how Croatia has been developing its migration policies, and how it implements its integration practices, the main question
of research focuses on the integration policies of immigrants and the children of immigrant origin into the educational system. Learning
the official language, permanent adult education, vocational training opportunities and validation of diplomas are understood as essential
prerequisites for the realization of socio-cultural and economic dimensions of integration. Comparing integration policies in Croatia with
those of the EU countries (with special reference to Slovenia as a state with which Croatia shares a common history and thus the ways of
regulating the right to cultural diversity) it becomes apparent that Croatia so far has no clearly-defined politics for immigrants integration.
Furthermore, the internal potential of the country to establish integrationist and to it related educational policy on the principles of
interculturalism has not been utilized. A selective approach towards each category of immigrants is evident: Croatian returnees from
diaspora; immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, who are linguistically and culturally close(r) to the receiving society; immigrants from
the developed EU countries; immigrants from other countries and asylum grantees.
The results obtained open further possible consideration of problems connected to integration processes which traditional immigration
countries of the EU are facing today, and possible manifestations of these problems in a country that is in the process of preparing to join
EU membership. Considering Croatian tradition that acknowledges ethnic and cultural diversity, it is all the more justified to problematize
identification of the ways and opportunities for raising public awareness towards acceptance of diversity and "otherness" nowdays.
The Influence of Education on Individual Mobility: Considering East-West Migration in Germany
Silvia Melzer, Institute for Employment Research, Germany
Nearly 20 years after the reunification, the incomes and, correspondingly, the living standards still vary remarkable between East and
West Germany. Simultaneously, migration costs are extraordinary low due to the lack of legal constrains and language barriers. These
huge income differences combined with low costs of relocation should represents powerful incentives to migrate for all groups of
the population. However, migrants from East Germany usually represent a highly selective group with favourable characteristics. For
example, they are younger and better paid. The impact of education on migration, stays unclear. Some studies find a distinct positive
influence of the education on migration. Hunt (2006) shows for examples that young college graduates are five times more likely to
migrate to the West than individuals without vocational training. Although, there are other studies which don’t identify any effects of
education on migration. Finally, there is a group of researches finding no direct effects of education on migration; nevertheless these
authors show that migrants are positive selected regarding to their income.
The aim of this article is therefore to analyse the impact of education on migration focusing on the influence of education on migration,
and on the self selection process involved in education and migration decisions.
Even less clear is the different impact of education on migration of men and women. Already the question if either women or men are
more likely to leave East Germany is difficult to answer. In the past, mobility of women was treated as a residual factor. Women were
excluded from the sample and understood as ‘tied movers’ at best; gender was used as a controlling variable. However, a new trend
can be observed in the mobility patterns in Germany lately. Young women leave East Germany at disproportionately high rates. In fact,
most Eastern regions experience an imbalance between the sexes. At the age-span of 18 to 29, only 80 women per 100 men live in East
Germany. The situation shows that the ‘tied mover’ approach is no longer appropriate. Therefore, this paper also analyses the genderspecific
dimension of migration.
Using human capital, signalling and segmentation theory, hypotheses on the influence of education on migration are derived. The
migration patterns for men and women are investigated on the basis of individual behaviour which caused the aggregated movements
on the macro level. Separate fixed effects models for men and women are used to estimate the migration patterns, and combined
estimations were applied to investigate factors with gender-specific influence. In a further step the Heckman selection is applied (also
separately for men and women) to control for unobserved characteristics of the migrants influencing both the decision to visit further
education and to migrate.
I use data from the Socio-economic panel study (SOEP) a representative longitudinal dataset. It contains extensive information on
the employment and educational history of individuals. The analyses are based on the waves from 1992 to 2007 and therefore contain
information from 15 years. Preliminary results of the fixed effects models show that young women tend to be more mobile and that their
willingness to migrate is slightly more influenced by their education; for every year spend in education the likelihood to migrate rises
1.5 percent more for women than for men. Admittedly, the difference is not statistically significant. Using Heckman selection it can be
showed that unlike men, women are in fact selected on education.
From Democracies to Dictatorships: Political Determinants of the Direction of Migration Flows
Atisha Kumar, Yale University & University of Cambridge, USA & UK
Nearly forty-nine years ago, on 13 August, 1961, the Berlin Wall was built, in part, to stop the influx of people from authoritarian
East Germany into its more democratic Western counterpart. Prior to the building of the Wall, approximately three and a half million
Germans moved permanently from East Germany to West Germany. Why did these individuals leave the East? Between 1945 and 1961,
East Germany was prospering economically and offered a comparable number of employment opportunities as its Western neighbour.
These migration patterns in the period preceding the installation of the Wall highlight that economics is not the sole determinant of
human flows. The movement of people from a repressive to a democratic system, from one Germany to another, illustrates that political
freedoms can affect migration. In this paper, I put forward the idea that regime type influences the direction of migration flows, with
democracies witnessing higher rates of in-migration than dictatorships.
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