Temporary Migration, Human Capital, and Language Fluency of Migrants

This paper investigates the human capital investments of migrants whose duration in the host country is limited, either by contract or by their own choice. The first part of the paper develops a model, distinguishing between migrants who immigrate on a fixed contract, and migrants who choose their return point freely. The analysis has a number of interesting implications for empirical work. Some are explored in the second part of the paper, which is an empirical analysis of investments of migrants into language capital.