Education

• Pages: 13-20

13



Education

Educational qua lif‌ications and mastering the h ost coun-

try’s language in o rder to access the labour market are

critical aspec ts of integration. This is also ref‌le cted in EU

legislation– suc h as, for example, in th e Single Permit

and the Long-term Residence directives.48 However,

they are not easy to achieve, par ticularly for im mi-

grant women, who of ten also have family and ch ild

care responsibilitie s and are thus doubly d isadvan-

taged– as women and as immig rants. This affects t heir

employment outcomes i n comparison to migr ant men

and to majority p opulation women. A lready in 2006,

the European Parlia ment called on Member States49 to

ensure that women immi grants receive adequa te and

essential educati on in the form of language lesso ns and

information concerning fundamental human, political

and social rights and democratic principles stressing,

in particula r, the importance of unconditiona l and even

priority access for im migrant women to education and

language train ing. In this respect, the EU’s Action Plan

on the integration of t hird country nation als of June

2016 recommends that “la nguage programmes should

be provided at the earlie st stage possible after arriva l,

adapted to each person’s linguistic competences needs

and combining language learning with learning of other

skills and competen ces or work experiences. Aspecial

effort should b e made to ensure that these cou rses

reach women as well as men”.50

48 Council D irective 2011/98/EU of 13 Decem ber 2011 on

asingle app lication procedure for as ingle permit for thi rd-

country nati onals to reside and work i n the territory of

aMember State a nd on acommon set of right s for third-

country worke rs legally residing i n aMember State, OJ 2011

L343; and Coun cil Directive 2003/10 9/EC of 25 November

2003 concernin g the status of third-cou ntry nationals wh o

are long-term residents, OJ 2004 L16.

49 European Parliament (2006), Resolut ion on women’s

immigrati on: the role and place of im migrant women in the

European Union, P6_TA(2006)0437, Strasbourg, 24 Oct ober

2006.

50 Eu ropean Commission (201 6), p. 7.

Some Member States established specific, gender

sensitive measures. For e xample, since 2012, t he city

of Vienna in Austria of fers free basic skills cl asses in

German, maths and I T combined with chil dcare in kin-

dergartens and schools.51 In 2015, Germany developed

aconcept for special i ntegration/langu age courses52

targeting immig rant women, and parent s, who can-

not attend genera lly available course s for family or

cultural reasons. These courses help improve the lan-

guage skills of women t hemselves, who also “act as

multipliers” improving the use of the national language

within the famil y. In the f‌irst half of 2018, 2,974 women

(87.1% of all particip ants) had enrolled in these special

courses, in additio n to 57,103 women who enrolled in

other regular courses.53

2.1. Educational attainment

Overall in the EU, among the general population, more

women (30 %) than men (25.9%) have completed

tertiary education.54 This also ap plies to immigra nt

women: according to the OECD, 30 % of immigra nt

women resident in the EU have compl eted tertiary

education55 and around 33% of those employed hold

highly skilled p ositions, compared to 31% of immigrant

men.56 As illustrated in Fi gure2 , based on ara ndom

sample of immig rants and descendants of immigra nts

from specif‌ic countrie s and regions of origin outsi de the

EU, only 62% of women and 61% of men respondents,

aged 16-64 years, complete d at least upper secondary

51 See webpage o n Mum learns German!.

52 Germany, Bundesamt fü r Migration und Flüc htlinge (2015).

53 See f‌lyer about the programme, available on the website of

the Bundes amt für Migration un d Flüchtlinge.

54 Eurostat, Popu lation by educationa l attainment level , sex and

age (%)- main indicato rs, [edat_lfse_03].

55 OECD (2018), p. 152.

56 Ibid., p. 164.