Socioemotional Skills and Refugees’ Language Acquisition

This paper contributes to the existing literature by extending Chiswick and Miller’s (2001) model to include socioemotional skills. While the theoretical model predicts that exposure, efficiency, and incentives determine language proficiency, we additionally assume that socioemotional skills influence these three constructs and thereby language proficiency. Specifically, we seek to answer the following research questions: How do socioemotional skills affect the language attainment of recent refugees? What is the relative importance of socioemotional skills in refugees’ language learning process? Given the findings of the prior literature that personality traits may compensate for socioeconomic adversity (e.g. Damian et al. 2015), we further ask whether socioemotional skills may compensate for refugees’ resource disadvantages. Empirically, we rely on growth curve models and recent longitudinal data from the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Refugee Sample.