New Immigrants ― Old Disadvantage Patterns? Labour Market Integration of Recent Immigrants into Germany
| Date | 01 February 2011 |
| Published date | 01 February 2011 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2010.00609.x |
| Author | Irena Kogan |
New Immigrants — Old
Disadvantage Patterns? Labour
Market Integration of Recent
Immigrants into Germany
Irena Kogan*
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the labour market integration of immigrants who
have entered Germany since 1990, and compares their situation with that
of their predecessors. The analyses based on the cumulative micro-census
data reveal that recent immigrants into Germany are on average better-
educated than their earlier counterparts, and some ethnic groups are even
better- educated than the national average. Despite their high levels of for-
mal education, these immigrants coming mostly from Eastern Europe,
Africa and the Middle East face severe integration problems in the
German labour market. Thus, after taking into account the value of
human capital represented by these immigrants, their ethnic disadvantages
appear to increase. This stands in sharp contrast with the disadvantages
faced by ‘‘classic’’ immigrants who arrived in Germany during the 1960s
and 1970s, for whom lack of human capital had been identified as the
main obstacle to labour market integration.
INTRODUCTION
The growing body of empirical research in Germany has repeatedly
demonstrated that the prospects of immigrants in the labour market
have been weaker than native Germans. Immigrants are over-
represented among the unemployed and in the lower strata of the
occupational hierarchy (Seifert, 1997; Velling, 1995; Bender and Seifert,
1996; Szydlik, 1996; Kogan, 2004, 2007). This being said, the patterns as
* University of Mannheim, Mannheim.
2010 The Author
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., International Migration 2010 IOM
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, International Migration Vol. 49 (1) 2011
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. ISSN 0020-7985
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2435.2010.00609.x
MIGRATION
Edited by Elzbieta Gozdziak, Georgetown University
well as the underlying factors behind these disadvantages are somewhat
different for the two major migratory waves after World War II.
Initially, immigrants arrived within the framework of guest worker
recruitment and subsequently accompanied by their family members,
and thereafter beginning in the late 1980s, immigrants arrived as refu-
gees, asylum seekers, diaspora returnees and labour migrants. The main
explanation for the disadvantages experienced by ‘‘classic’’ immigrants
who arrived in Germany during the 1960-1970s within the framework of
guest worker recruitment schemes from Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey,
Portugal and Yugoslavia is their negative selectivity (the fact that they
arrived from economically depressed areas of their native countries and
possessed little human capital, including education). Thus, once educa-
tion has been controlled for, the general disadvantages faced by first-
generation labour migrants in Germany appear to decrease (Kalter and
Granato, 2007). Recent immigrants coming mostly from Eastern
Europe, Africa and the Middle East face no least severe problems when
attempting to integrate into the German labour market, despite their
comparatively high levels of human capital. Thus, their ethnic disadvan-
tages appear to increase once one has taken the human capital charac-
teristics of these immigrants into account (Kalter and Granato, 2007).
The aim of this paper is to directly compare the labour market situation
of more recent immigrants to their predecessors while allowing the dis-
aggregation of the former group to enable an adequate interpretation
for the findings (Kalter and Granato, 2007). Before examining possible
reasons for the disadvantages faced by immigrants in the labour market,
the next section will detail the recent migratory waves into Germany.
The methodology of this study will be further discussed, to be followed
by a presentation of the descriptive and analytical results. The paper
concludes with a summary of the main findings of the study and their
implications.
RECENT IMMIGRATION TO GERMANY
Germany’s transformation into an immigrant-receiving society began
when the post-war ‘‘economic miracle’’ resulted in the expanding recruit-
ment of labour recruitment from foreign countries. Labour recruitment
from Italy began in 1955, from Spain and Greece in 1960, from Turkey
in 1961, from Morocco in 1963, from Portugal in 1964, from Tunisia in
1965, and from Yugoslavia in 1968. Recruitment from these countries in
the period between 1961 and 1973 brought a large number of lowly-
92 Kogan
2010 The Author
International Migration 2010 IOM
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