Origins matter: Immigrant selectivity in Western Europe
Final Report Abstract
This research project started from a core insight in the sociology of migration, namely that immigrants are not a random sample of the origin population, but differ in certain characteristics from individuals who stay behind. It, firstly, provided a description of educational selectivity for various immigrant groups who have migrated to different Western European destinations. Secondly, it investigated the consequences of selectivity for immigrants' incorporation into the receiving societies. Selectivity was introduced as an individual-level characteristic – in contrast to the widespread view of selectivity as a group characteristic in the literature. It was measured by recording an individual's age- and sex-specific position in the distribution of the characteristic in question in their origin region or country. The resulting measure indicates the relative position of the individual migrant in the respective distribution. The project has produced a number of new insights. We have been able do comprehensibly document that immigrants differ from those who remain in their country of origin in various important characteristics, including educational attainment, age, gender, attitudes, and personality traits. Moreover, we could show that selectivity profiles vary across different origin groups, across immigrants who migrate for different reasons and across different destinations. Two interconnected key findings from the descriptive account stand out in particular. First, every origin group is composed of varying proportions of positively and negatively selected individuals. In most cases, the origin groups cover the whole spectrum of selectivity, so that characterizing them as either predominantly positively or negatively selected does not seem adequate. In many cases, the heterogeneity within the groups under study appears to be larger than the heterogeneity across them. Second, there is little evidence for the longstanding assumptions about typical differences in the degree of selectivity between different types of immigrants. According to our findings, there are few and only minor differences between refugee and labor migrants. Furthermore, our research has demonstrated that selectivity plays a significant role in the incorporation of immigrants into receiving societies with regard to language proficiency, labor market participation and contact to members of the native-born population. Nevertheless, we were only able to examine the underlying mechanisms that explain these associations in a limited number of studies. Therefore, additional investigations are necessary to provide a better understanding of the causal pathways connecting selectivity to variations in immigrant integration.
Publications
-
Educational Selectivity and Language Acquisition among Recently Arrived Immigrants. International Migration Review, 53(4), 1148-1170.
Spörlein, Christoph & Kristen, Cornelia
-
Why We Should Care About Regional Origins: Educational Selectivity Among Refugees and Labor Migrants in Western Europe. Frontiers in Sociology, 4.
Spörlein, Christoph & Kristen, Cornelia
-
Fünf Jahre danach: Eine Zwischenbilanz zur Integration von Geflüchteten [Five years thereafter: Taking stock of refugees’ integration]. DIW Wochenbericht 34: 559-561.
Kristen, C. & Spiess, C. K.
-
Mehrheit der Geflüchteten hat höhere Bildung im Vergleich zur Herkunftsgesellschaft [Most refugees have acquired more education than the population at origin]. DIW Wochenbericht 34: 563-570.
Kristen, C.; Spörlein, C.; Schmidt, R. & Welker, J.
-
Selectivity profiles of recently arrived refugees and labour migrants in Germany. Soziale Welt, 71(1-2), 54-89.
Spörlein, Christoph; Kristen, Cornelia; Schmidt, Regine & Welker, Jörg
-
Welche Bildung bringen Zuwanderer mit? Eine Einordnung vor dem Hintergrund der Bildungsverteilungen im Herkunftsland [What education do immigrants bring with them? A classification based on educational distributions in the country of origin]. uni.vers Forschung 2020: Lernen, ein Leben lang. Bamberger Beiträge zur Bildungsforschung, Universität Bamberg.
Kristen, C.
-
Educational Selectivity and Immigrants’ Labour Market Performance in Europe. European Sociological Review, 38(2), 252-268.
Schmidt, Regine; Kristen, Cornelia & Mühlau, Peter
-
Relative education of recent refugees in Germany and the Middle East: Is selectivity reflected in migration and destination decisions?. International Migration, 60(2), 65-80.
Welker, Jörg
-
The role of recent refugees' educational selectivity in their children's educational decisions in Germany. Frontiers in Sociology, 7.
Welker, Jörg & Will, Gisela
