Carolin Hoeltken

TIL that Featherstonehaugh and Woolfordisworthy are two- and three-syllable words, respectively.

It has been the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS alongside the many dedicated civil servants tasked with measuring a vast and dynamic economy. It is vital and important work and I thank them for their service to this nation.

Really gutted that a promising PhD candidate might not be able to start his PhD due to a huge funding gap. It’s a tough reminder of how financial barriers still block talent from the Global South

That’s a wrap on the AREUEA International Conference 2025! A fantastic week of ideas, insights, and connections. Catch the highlights here: www.linkedin.com/posts/americ...

Dr Carolin Hoeltken co-authors new article in Housing Studies

📚🏠The Department's Dr @caroehoeltken.bsky.social has co-authored a new paper in the journal Housing Studies, which looks at the housing outcomes for immigrants to the UK. 🔗Read more on our website here: www.landecon.cam.ac.uk/news/dr-caro...

Agreed, based on the fact that people commonly don’t even understand inflation.

Age at arrival and immigrants’ housing outcomes: evidence from the UK We provide new evidence on how immigrants’ age at arrival relates to their housing tenure and living conditions in the UK. While previous research has examined the role of socio-economic and demogr...

These findings shed light on the ways migration timing shapes housing prospects. We hope our work helps inform policies that support better housing opportunities for all generations of immigrants.

Link to the paper: doi.org/10.1080/0267...

Enjoy!

Using representative data, we find that those who come as adults are much less likely to become homeowners compared to those who arrive very young. Interestingly, later arrivals aren't more likely to depend on social housing, and we don't see big differences in housing/neighbourhood quality by AAA.

Excited to share our new paper just published in @housingjournal.bsky.social, "Age at arrival and immigrants' housing outcomes: evidence from the UK".

In this study, we look at how the age at arrival (AAA) of immigrants in the UK affects their housing outcomes.

🫣

Proud Director of Studies moment at @homertoncollege.bsky.social graduation—congratulations to all!

Massively proud of all my students who are graduating this weekend @homertoncollege.bsky.social

That feeling when the paper you submitted 1,345 days ago has finally been accepted for publication

@homertoncollege.bsky.social in full bloom

Another beautiful English summer morning

Pre-doc positions 👇

Ah, the unmistakable charm of an English summer

(No, not Cambridge)

We are pleased to announce the publication of the latest issue of Real Estate Economics (Volume 53, Issue 3, May 2025). Articles can be viewed here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15406229...

Meet AREUEA 2025 Junior Scholar Sowon Kim! #econsky

Website: sites.google.com/view/sowon-kim

Meet AREUEA 2025 Junior Scholar Gi Kim! #econsky

Website: www.gi-kim.com

Meet AREUEA 2025 Junior Scholar Mike Mei! #econsky

Website: www.mikemei.com

Announcing the AREUEA 2025 Junior Scholar Cohort. Meet Yifan Chen! #econsky

Website: shidler.hawaii.edu/fin/director...

The UK is literally a nation of strangers. I know a miniscule fraction of you, only my friends, associates, family. The use of this term can only have racist interpretations. Strangers that are different from all the other strangers by virtue of being from somewhere else.

Slightly amended so I can fit this here: I am writing to you as an immigrant who chose to make the UK my home. As someone who is now also a British citizen. And as a German-born historian who understands where the complete normalisation of the far right can end. I write to say: For shame! I first came to the UK in the 1990s for a visit with my grandmother. Objectively, much was backwards here. No mixer taps in the bathroom; awful ‘bread’; and strings had to be pulled to switch on lights. But however I felt about this, my own string had been pulled: I loved this Cool Britannia. It was quite possibly then that I decided that the UK was to be my home. When I arrived to settle here permanently, I made a choice: to contribute my skills, my knowledge—all I have to offer—to this country rather than another one. I am deeply disgusted by your comment today that immigration has done ‘incalculable damage’ to the country. This is the language of the far right. It is insulting, hateful & will fuel xenophobia. And it is just wrong. Migration is a normal part of the human existence. None of us would be where we are without it. Open your fridge and you will see migration. Immigrants help make the UK tick every single day, whether we clean toilets in our hospitals or provide care for the elderly; whether we empty our bins or carry out cancer research. We are mothers, sons-in-law, aunts and uncles, friends, neighbours and colleagues. I ask you not tell me that you do not mean me. I know that you do not—at least not primarily—mean a white woman from Europe who has a PhD. But who do you mean? And, much more importantly, who do you think those racists who were engaged in riots on our streets last summer think you mean? Anti-immigration narratives have defined UK policymaking for the best part of two decades. And fundamentally so. They were the key driver in delivering Brexit, for example, and, as such, have directly limited the rights and opportunities of British citizens.

This obsessive focus on immigration as the ‘problem’—that is the real problem. And it is consistently delivering poor outcomes for the UK. Instead of tackling this, you are choosing to consolidate it, sowing divisions along the way. You may point me to polling and tell me that this is what voters want. Do they? I am not surprised at all that over 50% of voters might say they want to see immigration reduced if that is the question they are being asked. What we need to know is what they would answer to the question: “Would you like to see immigration reduced? What this would mean for you and your local community is XYZ.” That is not how surveys can ask questions, but governments absolutely can choose to make policy using such a more informed position. Prime Minister, you continue to talk a lot about making the tough choices. But let’s be clear: setting immigrants up as the ‘other’, as a scapegoat—describing us as a threat ‘pulling the country apart’, a ‘squalid chapter’, a risk that might make the UK an ‘island of strangers’—these are not tough choices at all. These are the easy choices. They are the choices that populists make who have no solutions to the real problems a country faces. What I would like to know, Prime Minister, is what you will do when your policies lead to the implosion of the UK’s Higher Education sector. What you will tell communities when they can no longer provide any care for the elderly. The policies you announced today will not solve anything at all. They will have exclusively negative impacts. For those immediately affected; for our communities; and for our economy. Being pro-immigration—it is progressive, yes, but the much more crucial point is that it is also the most pro-UK policy approach that any politician in the country can pursue. And you are choosing to do the opposite. This, Prime Minister, is the real damage—and it will be very calculable indeed. Tanja Bueltmann

My letter to the Prime Minister. #immigration

Please re-post! We have THREE funded PhD studentship opportunities open, as part of a new NIHR-funded partnership on outbreak-related behaviours between @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social, University of East Anglia and @ukhsa.bsky.social. The links are in this thread, closing date: 18th May 2025. 1/3

Every now again it’s useful to repeat advice about accessing papers that are behind a paywall that excludes you. Email the author. My estimate is that 90% of academics are so thrilled that a living, breathing, possibly even reading, person shows interest that they will swiftly send you a copy.

Join us next Wednesday, May 7, at 11:00 (ET), for our Virtual Seminar! #econsky

Registration: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

The first draft is where you explain it to yourself. The second draft is where you explain it to your readers

Friendly reminder: there is basically no case in which we assume normality of VARIABLES. It is essentially always the normality of the error term (and that is often not required, though it sometimes is).