Making integration work? : facilitating access to occupational recognition and immigrants labor market performance

This paper exploits a reform that facilitated the recognition of foreign occupational qualifications for non-EU immigrants in Germany. Using detailed administrative social security and survey data in a dfference-in-differences design, we find that the reform increased the share of non-EU immigrants with occupational recognition by 5 percentage points, raising their employment in regulated occupations (e.g., nurses) by 18.6 percent after the reform. Moreover, despite the large inflow of non-EU immigrants in regulated occupations, we find no evidence that these immigrants had lower skills or that they received lower wages.