Study: Middle Eastern Asylum-Seekers in Austria 'Well Educated'

Many Middle Eastern migrants who were granted asylum in Austria last year came from educated backgrounds, a government-funded pilot study revealed Tuesday.

The study by the national employment agency AMS found that of the 898 participants, 61 percent had a high-school diploma, a university degree or professional qualifications.

Syrians, Iranians and Iraqis held the highest levels of education, while migrants from Afghanistan -- who top the list of asylum claims in Austria in 2015 -- fared the worst, with some 30 percent lacking any form of formal schooling.

"Decades of war have left clear traces in Afghanistan. People's professional experiences are also lacking because of the country's underdeveloped economy and therefore often not usable here in Austria," noted AMS head Johannes Kopf.

The study, which was conducted between August and December last year, focused only on migrants who already had their asylum claim approved.

It also showed that the 447 female participants were better educated than their male counterparts.

Kopf said the overall results made him feel "cautiously optimistic", but insisted that integrating migrants into the Austrian labor market remained a "Herculean effort".

Austria registered 90,000 asylum claims in 2015, government figures showed Tuesday, a rise of more than 200 percent compared to 28,000 the year before and just 11,000 in 2010.

Afghans topped the list of requests by nationality with 25,202 asylum claims closely followed by 25,064 fleeing the civil war in Syria and 13,258 Iraqis, the interior ministry data showed.

Austria last year became a major transit country for hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere traveling up from Greece through the Balkans.

The migrants and refugees seek mostly to travel onwards, notably to Germany and Sweden, but Austria still has one of the highest asylum claim rates per capita in the 28-nation European Union.