SOEP Research: Migration and Integration

The Long Run Impact of Expulsion of Germans (1944-1950) on Anti-Refugee Voting

The political consequences of refugees for receiving countries have received much attention in recent years and have sparked a burgeoning literature. However, evidence on the long-run consequences of refugees is lacking. The expulsion of 8 million Germans (so-called expellees) from Eastern Europe to post-WWII West Germany serves as a natural experiment that allows us to estimate the long-run...

Health Policy and Access to Health Care in Germany: A Fragmented System for Asylum Seekers’ Health

In Germany, health needs of citizens and ordinary residents are taken care of under the scope of statutory social and health insurance. The asylum-seeking population, however, receives healthcare through a parallel system, where decisions on provision of health services are not met at a central health governance level, but rather at federal state and sometimes at municipal...

The Dynamics of Recent Refugees’ Language Acquisition: How Do Their Pathways Compare to Those of Other New Immigrants?

Do the processes underlying destination-language acquisition differ between recently arrived refugees and other new immigrants? Based on a well-established model of language learning according to which language fluency is a function of efficiency, incentives, and exposure, this study addresses general processes of language learning as well as conditions specific to refugees. Longitudinal data on refugees ...

An Investment in the Future: Institutional Aspects of Credential Recognition of Refugees in Germany

Adding to the rich literature on the economic integration of refugees, this article extends the scope towards the role of institutions by focusing on the transfer of human capital by means of credential recognition. The 2012 Federal Act of Recognition in Germany is a new institution that provides the possibility to study the transfer of human capital in depth. I argue that analysing the decision for ...

Panel Data in Research on Mobility and Migration: A Review of Recent Advances

Panel data has become the gold standard for causal assessments of complex human behaviour in quantitative social science. The objective of this review is to examine and discuss how panel data and related methods contribute to the identification of causal relationships in spatial mobility research. We illustrate this by providing a succinct overview of recent progress in spatial mobility research, drawing ...

How Often Have You Felt Disadvantaged? Explaining Perceived Discrimination

Im Rahmen einer Längsschnittanalyse des sozio-oekonomischen Panels gehen wir der Frage nach, wie sich Diskriminierungswahrnehmungen von Einwanderern und ihren Nachkommen im Laufe des Integrationsprozesses verändern. Insgesamt betrachtet fühlen sich Migrantinnen und Migranten, deren Integration weiter fortgeschritten ist, seltener aufgrund ihrer Herkunft benachteiligt. Allerdings zeigen gruppenspezifische ...

Hate Is Too Great a Burden to Bear: Hate Crimes and the Mental Health of Refugees

Against a background of increasing violence against non-natives, we estimate the effect of hate crime on refugees’ mental health in Germany. For this purpose, we combine two datasets: administrative records on xenophobic crime against refugee shelters by the Federal Criminal Office and the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees. We apply a regression discontinuity design in time to estimate the effect of ...

The Economic Implications of Migration

Women on the Move – Current Perspectives on Female Migration

Today, half of the world’s migrants are female, amounting to 114 million individuals in 2017. The intersection between migration and gender has profound consequences for individuals: gender affects, amongst others migration motifs, selection into migration, as well as decisions on destination countries. Further, the experiences in the host country are gender-specific and especially so when...

The Challenged Sense of Belonging Scale (Csbs): A Validation Study in English, Arabic, and Farsi/Dari among Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Germany

This study introduces and investigates the validity of a brief scale measuring a challenged sense of belonging. The sense of belonging as well as challenges to this sense are important, albeit neglected aspects of social integration and of significance to migration and refugee studies as well as to virtually all other social science contexts. Assessing a challenged or eroded sense of belonging provides ...