How Migration Shapes Integration : Early Patterns of Migration and Sociocultural Integration of New Immigrants in Germany

Abstract

Migration research observes increasingly complex migration patterns: migrants follow various migration motives and have different migration experiences. Their individual characteristics, intentions to stay, and migration behavior are very heterogeneous. These complex migration patterns challenge the understanding of integration as an inevitable successive process, which is prevailing in migration research and mainly based on the assumption of ‘coming to stay’. Against this backdrop, this cumulative doctoral dissertation encompasses three research articles on the influence of migration on the early sociocultural integration trajectories of newly arrived immigrants in Germany. In each of these articles German language acquisition, contact to Germans as well as identification with Germany are studied as dimensions of sociocultural integration. The data used in these research articles come from two different surveys among newly arrived immigrants: the „Project on Sociocultural Integration Processes among New Immigrants in Europe (SCIP)“ and the project „Recent Immigration Processes and Early Integration Trajectories in Germany (ENTRA)“. Data for SCIP were collected in two waves between 2010 and 2013. ENTRA contains data from three surveys conducted between 2019 and 2021. The first research article uses Latent Class Analysis to test the empirical prevalence of two migrant types that feature prominently in the literature – settlers and target-earners – among newly arrived Poles and Turks in Germany. Thereby, an additional type called young learner/professional is identified. The early integration trajectories of these three types mostly reflect differences in their intentions to stay, individual resources and opportunities to integrate. Belonging to a particular migrant type per se, and thus having a particular combination of characteristics, is not superior to the individual variables used to identify each type in explaining differences in the sociocultural integration of newly arrived immigrants. The second research article describes two theoretical perspectives on migrants’ integration – integration ‘over time’ and integration as a result of migrants’ individual motivation and corresponding investments. By analyzing mini-panel data from newly arrived Italians, Poles, Syrians, and Turks in Germany, this article shows that migrants who intend to stay in Germany permanently have higher levels of integration shortly after arrival but do not integrate faster than other migrants. Moreover, migrants’ duration of stay is important for the acquisition of German language skills. Yet, for the identification with Germany migrants’ intention to stay in terms of motivation is especially relevant. The third research article compares two cohorts of newly arrived Turks which came to Germany at different points in time. This article is based on the assumption, that changes in cohort composition can explain differences in the integration between both cohorts. In a first step, descriptive results show that migrants belonging to the recent cohort are higher educated, hold more political migration motives, and are less religious than migrants from the earlier cohort. These differences in cohort composition can explain differences in contact to Germans, other immigrants and other Turks as well as in the identification with Germany and Turkey. There is no correlation between differences in German language skills and identification with Europe and differences in the educational level, migration motives, or religiosity of both groups. Overall, this dissertation highlights that migration is a highly complex phenomenon that (in its multifaceted nature) has an impact on the sociocultural integration of migrants. It shows that migrant types are a suited tool to illustrate complex migration patterns. However, they do not contribute significantly to the explanation of early integration trajectories. Further, this dissertation reveals that successful host country integration requires more than just time spent in this country and that the integration of certain migrant groups changes with their composition – thus, for example, ‘the’ Turks in Germany do not exist.