Language training and humanitarian migrants’ host language skills: recent evidence from Australia

This chapter discusses language instruction as an important step to help integrate refugees, socially and economically, to improve their host country language proficiency. It also highlights the relationship between the acquisition of English-language skills and subsequent socioeconomic, health, and well-being outcomes of humanitarian migrants using panel data from the Building a New Life in Australia survey. The chapter argues that language skills are a critical manifestation of a migrant’s capacity to adapt to and integrate into the host culture and society. It further contends that migrants and refugees with competent local language skills tend to be culturally resilient and equipped with elevated levels of psychological resources to increase their self-efficacy and self-esteem. The chapter concludes that the benefits of government support for programs targeting migrants, especially refugees, are often downplayed relative to the costs of such programs.