Does the Recognition of Foreign Credentials Decrease the Risk for Immigrants of Being Mismatched in Education or Skills?

Abstract

There is evidence that immigrants experience difficulties in finding a job that matches their human capital endowment upon arrival in the host country. Based on data from the Migration-Mobility Survey 2016, our empirical analysis has two goals. First, it measures the incidence of educational and skills mismatches among different groups of recent immigrants according to their origin and status of foreign credential recognition. Second, it investigates whether the recognition of foreign qualification improves access to the labour market by reducing the risk of being mismatched in education or skills. Results show that recent migrants face the lowest risk of educational and skills mismatches when holding a Swiss diploma or having obtained recognition of foreign credentials. Although our analytical approach does not allow us to identify causal relationships, credential recognition seems to play a beneficial role in the immigrants’ assimilation process.