Female Employment after Migration (FEM): A Dynamic Approach to Women’s Work and Family Patterns after Migration

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Claudia Diehl; Professor Dr. Johannes Giesecke; Professorin Dr. Michaela Regina Kreyenfeld; Professor Dr. Martin Kroh
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 403158126

A large body of literature has amassed that investigates the conditions and processes of the labor market integration of migrants. In this context, female migrants have often been viewed as "tied movers" whose migration decision is subordinate to the behavior of the male breadwinner. How these gendered migration patterns influence the life course of female migrants, however, has often been left unexplored. This project seeks to fill parts of this research gap by adopting a life course approach to examine how female migrants’ employment decisions intersect with the fertility and partnership domain of the life course. Data for this analysis will come from the IAB-Migrant and the Refugee Samples of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), the microcensus and the Integrated Employment Biographies Sample (IEBS). Our analytical sample will include the most recent female migrants who have come to Germany in the years 1990–2015. Our project fills a research gap in the following ways: Firstly, we provide novel evidence on recent migrants’ behavior based on rich longitudinal data that has become available for Germany. Secondly, we bridge the rather unrelated strands of literature that examine the employment and family behavior of migrants. Thirdly, we investigate how employment intersects with other domains of the life course, in particular how the conditions at migration span forward in time and influence migrants’ family, employment and poverty dynamics.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants