SOEP Research: Migration and Integration

Refugee women's labor market participation is increasing

High-profile crime and perceived public safety: evidence from Cologne's New Year's Eve in 2015

joint with Alexander Schmidt-Catran, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt This study analyses the impact of a high-profile crime event on perceived public safety. At the 2015 New Year's Eve celebrations in Cologne (NYE), Germany, refugees allegedly committed thousands of crimes, ranging from theft to sexual assault. The widespread media coverage of these incidents has made a shift in the publics’...

CANCELED: Ethnic segregation in a stratified school system: Does ability tracking hamper ‘white flight’ from local schools?

Research on parental school choice provides strong evidence of so-called ‘white flight’ – that ethnic majority parents avoid choosing a local school if it contains large numbers of ethnic minority students. In this study, we examine such segregating choices in a formally stratified school system. Theoretically, we argue that segregating choices are less common in an educational setting where...

Wohnsitzauflage: An opportunity for integration? The Impact of Residential Obligation Policy on Refugee Women’s Labor Market Participation

*************POSTPONED*****************To promote integration, the German government enacted the Residential Obligation Act (Wohnsitzauflage) in 2016, which obliges refugees to maintain their residence in the states to which they have been assigned for a period of three years from the time they are granted asylum or temporary residence. Studies addressing this policy have found controversial...

The Impact of Migration on Wages in Costa Rica

In recent years, Costa Rica has experienced greater international migration from neighboring countries due to political, economic, and social reasons, raising discussions on the impact of migration on wages of native Costa Rican workers. This article is the first that disentangles the impact of migration on wages for native Costa Ricans from the impact for settled immigrants by analyzing the effect ...

Migration and Dynamics in Men’s and Women’s Domestic Work

International migration of couples is rising. Still, there is little evidence on men’s and women’s domestic work hours before and after migration. This is despite the fact that domestic work provides deep insights into family life and, for migrants, is directly linked to integration. Therefore, this study examines how immigrant men and women change their domestic work hours following migration, using ...

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 ...

The Impact of COVID-19 Government Responses on Remittances in Latin American Countries

Workers' remittances declined sharply as the COVID-19 pandemic spread in the first half of 2020, rebounding in the second half. This paper analyses the impact of containment and economic support measures on remittances sent to Latin America during 2019–2020 using a gravity model estimated with the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator (PPML). Results show that containment measures in receiving ...

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...