SOEP Research: Migration and Integration

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...

Workshop on the Integration of Refugee Families in Host Countries: Research Advances, Policy Improvements, and Data Challenges

This one-day workshop aims to bring together researchers working on various aspects of the integration of refugee families into host societies and discuss the most recent research developments in this field. It also aims to discuss empirical research, data collection, and policy challenges in view of the new waves of refugees expected to arrive to Europe in the near future. To this end, the...

Refugees in Germany Perceived Higher Discrimination in the Wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic

Refugees in Germany perceive discrimination due to their country of origin in various life dimensions, which can negatively affect their integration into society. Using IAB-BAMF-SOEP survey data, this report analyzes to what extent refugees perceive discrimination on the labor market, at educational institutions, on the housing market, with public authorities, and in daily life. The results show that ...

Educational Selectivity and Immigrants’ Labour Market Performance in Europe

This article depicts the selectivity profiles of first-generation immigrants of multiple origins in 18 European destinations and investigates whether educational selectivity is relevant to their labour market performance. The theoretical account starts from the premise that the relative position individuals occupy in the educational distribution of their origin country represents—frequently unmeasured—characteristics ...

Mentoring as a Grassroots Effort for Integrating Refugees – Evidence from a Randomised Field Experiment

About 80 million people were displaced worldwide at the end of 2020. To support this highly vulnerable group, in recent years, local bottom-up initiatives proliferated to support refugee integration in hosting communities. This study examines a network intervention for refugees in collaboration with a social start-up whose mission is to match refugees and local volunteers to form friendships. We apply ...

Intergenerational Returns to Migration: Evidence from Italian Immigrants Worldwide

Using a unique administrative dataset on Italians living abroad, we estimate the effect of parental migration on the education, employment and income opportunities of descendants in the host country. We compare Italian second-generation immigrants with Italians residing in Italy having similar observable characteristics, such as age, sex, Italian region of origin and...

Belonging or Estrangement – the European Refugee Crisis and its Effects on Immigrant Identity

This study deals with the impact of the 2015 European Refugee Crisis on the ethnic identity of resident migrants in Germany. To derive plausibly causal estimates, I exploit the quasi-experimental setting in Germany, by which refugees are allocated to different counties by state authorities without being able to choose their locations themselves. This study finds that higher...

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 ...

Foreign Accents in the Early Hiring Process: A Field Experiment on Accent-Related Ethnic Discrimination in Germany

Based on a field experiment conducted in Germany between October 2014 and October 2015, this article focuses on the disadvantages associated with the presence of a foreign accent in the early hiring process, when applicants call in response to a job advertisement to ask whether the position is still available. We examine whether a foreign accent influences employers’ behaviors via productivity considerations ...

The Economic Implications of Migration