The Impact of Migration Policy on Migrants' Education Structure. Evidence from Two Austrian Policy Experiments

We ask how two reforms of migration law (EEA accession in 1994 and the integration agreement regulation in 2003) impacted on the education structure of migrants to Austria. To identify the effects of these reforms, we use the fact that EEA accession affected only migrants from EEA countries, while third country citizens were unaffected and that the opposite is the case for the integration agreement regulation. We find robust evidence that the share of low educated permanent migrants from the EEA to Austria reduced relative to the share of low educated permanent migrants from other countries due to Austria's EEA accession. With respect to the reform of residence law in 2003 our results are less robust. Most of them, however, point to an increased share of low skilled permanent migrants.