
A new analysis from the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit in Denmark found that when local employment chances are high, fewer refugees tend to graduate from their Danish language courses.
In other words, once a refugee has secured a job, they are less likely to finish their language course. The balance of ethnic groups in the neighbourhood was also found to make a difference: the more neighbours a refugee has with the same ethnic background as theirs, the less likely they are to begin a language course. It seems in these cases possible to 'get by' with one's native language.
These new findings are interesting, as the Danish integration programme is based on a combination of mandatory language courses and job training. There is a new tendency to move language teachers from schools into the workplace, and to tailor the language training to specific jobs, focusing on relevant words and expressions. The study does not examine the quality or the 'usefulness' of refugees' Danish skills, merely observing that securing a job renders a refugee in Denmark less likely to pass the language exam. On average, those refugees that secure a job within their first four years in the country are likely to be employed in jobs with very low language comprehension requirements (level 20 out of 100, for example).
Among those refugees that arrived in Denmark between 2004 and 2015, 93% of men and 88% of women have participated in Danish language classes. Eritrean nationals were found to be the most likely to have finished language courses (66%), and Iraqis the least (35%), despite the fact that in Denmark the education level of Eritreans is generally much lower than that of Iraqis.
A practical explanation for the negative effect of employment on completion rates of Danish language courses might simply be the lack of free energy and time available once working. It takes extra effort to keep up with language school on top of a full-time job, and if a person has children there would be additional stress factors. With this in mind, better combining language training and labour market insertion would be beneficial for refugees in Denmark.
When comparing statistics between Denmark, Sweden and Norway, it seems clear that Denmark's focus on ensuring that refugees becoming self-supporting as soon as possible only works in the very short term. Other countries' more intense focus on education clearly pays off in the longer term, especially when it comes to women. Several studies have found that education delivered in the host country is the main contributing factor to refugees' and migrants' attachment to the labour market in the long term.
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