Human capital accumulation and skills formation among natives and migrants in the UK

There are several ways in which the migrant/native dimension can be investigated to study the
determinants of skills composition. First, it can be done in terms of how and why migrants and natives differ in their specialisation. My project will reply to questions such as: do migrants and natives specialise in different subjects? If so, when do these differences emerge and how do they evolve over time? To what extent can these differences be explained by language proficiency? Due to (perceived) lower ability in English, migrants might specialise in more technical subjects, such as STEM subjects. And how are the differences due to differences in parental investment and aspirations towards education? Migrant and native parents might differ in their information about the educational system and in the aspirations for their children because of their different life experiences, cognitive and non-cognitive skills, and ethnic capital. Second, migration might cause natives to specialise in certain sectors more than others. Students do not make their choices in isolation but in response to the surrounding environment. The literature on peer effects has emphasised the roles that classmates have on various educational decisions (Elsner and
Isphording, 2017). I will assess whether the ethnic composition in the classroom affects future
educational decisions, thus contributing to the small literature on the topic in the UK (to my knowledge, only Geay et al. 2013 investigates the impact of non-English speaker pupils on natives' grades at primary education). Furthermore, I will investigate whether migrants also affect natives at the highest level of education. Within field of specialization, I will study whether migrants affect graduate natives on two dimensions: HE outcomes and labour market outcomes. During the fellowship, I will be exploring how to best reply to these research questions with available
data and appropriate empirical strategies using Advanced Quantitative Methods. I will address these research questions using econometric techniques to establish a causal relation between the variables and the outcomes of interest. The UK is an ideal country to study these questions. One of the best administrative datasets, the National Pupil Database, can now be linked to surveys (e.g. Understanding Society and the Millennium Cohort Study), and other administrative datasets (e.g. the Higher Education Statistical Agency). This provides ample scope for investigating my research questions in a quantitative framework by using novel and robust strategies. (Notice that I have already worked with all datasets just cited.) My project will give a comprehensive description of the issue of specialisation and skills formation in a life-cycle perspective, i.e. from primary school to HE. This is important because the UK educational system is characterised by early-specialisation. At age 14, pupils select which subjects to study (only maths and English are mandatory and science can be chosen to be studied as single/double/triple option) and their choices will affect whether and what to study at post-secondary school, which will in turn affect HE outcomes. Indeed, ethnic minorities are more likely to specialise in STEM subjects at secondary school and this is mirrored in degree choices at HE (Codiroli Mcmaster 2017). Furthermore, looking at only at one stage of education could be misleading to understand the overall impact of specialization and its determinants for migrants and natives. Ethnic minorities in primary school achieve lower grades when compared to natives (Dustmann and Trentini 2008). However, in secondary school, when specialization kicks off, they catch up, and some ethnic groups even outperform natives (Dustmann et al. 2010, Briggs et al. 2006). In the end, migrants end up accumulating more years of post-compulsory education than natives (Dustmann and Fabbri 2003).