A Life-Course Perspective on Migration and Integration Matthias Wingens Michael Windzio HelgadeValk Can Aybek Editors A Life-Course Perspective on Migration and Integration 123 Editors Matthias Wingens Michael Windzio Bremen International Graduate University of Bremen School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) EMPAS University of Bremen 28334 Bremen 28334 Bremen Germany Germany [email protected] [email protected] Can Aybek Helga de Valk University of Siegen Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Department of Political Science Institute the Hague 57068 Siegen and Germany Interface Demography [email protected] Vrije Universiteit Brussel PO Box 11650 2502 AR The Hague The Netherlands [email protected] ISBN 978-94-007-1544-8 e-ISBN 978-94-007-1545-5 DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1545-5 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2011931669 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Contents 1 The Sociological Life Course Approach and Research on Migration and Integration ................................................. 1 Matthias Wingens, Helga de Valk, Michael Windzio, and Can Aybek 2 Immigrants’ Educational Attainment: A Closer Look at the Age-at-Migration Effect ............................................... 27 Janina Sohn¨ 3 Varying Hurdles for Low-Skilled Youth on the Way to the Labour Market ............................................................. 55 Can Aybek 4 Individual Resources and Structural Constraints in Immigrants’ Labour Market Integration ................................ 75 Irena Kogan, Frank Kalter, Elisabeth Liebau, and Yinon Cohen 5 Overcoming Barriers. Career Trajectories of Highly Skilled Members of the German Second Generation ................... 101 Karin Schittenhelm 6 Integration Trajectories: A Mixed Method Approach ................. 121 Rossalina Latcheva and Barbara Herzog-Punzenberger 7 National Context and Logic of Social Distancing: Children of Immigrants in France and Germany .................................. 143 Ingrid Tucci 8 Paths to Adulthood: A Focus on the Children of Immigrants in the Netherlands ........................................ 165 Helga de Valk v vi Contents 9 Linked Life-Events. Leaving Parental Home in Turkish Immigrant and Native Families in Germany ............................ 187 Michael Windzio 10 Occupational Mobility in the Life Course of Intermarried Ethnic Minorities ........................................................... 211 Raya Muttarak 11 The Effect of Ethnic Segregation on the Process of Assimilation ..... 239 Andreas Farwick 12 Immigrant Integration, Transnational Activities and the Life Course .................................................................. 259 Reinhard Schunck 13 Immigrant Settlement and the Life Course: An Exchange of Research Perspectives and Outlook for the Future .................. 283 Helga de Valk, Michael Windzio, Matthias Wingens, and Can Aybek Chapter 1 The Sociological Life Course Approach and Research on Migration and Integration Matthias Wingens, Helga de Valk, Michael Windzio, and Can Aybek Over the last four decades the life course perspective has become an important and fruitful approach in the social sciences. Some of its proponents even claim that the life course approach today is the pre-eminent theoretical orientation and new core research paradigm in social science (Elder et al. 2003; Heinz et al. 2009). Although not everyone will agree with this far reaching claim, few will dispute that the life course approach constitutes a promising conceptual starting point for overcoming the crucial micro-macro problem in social research by analysing the dynamic interrelation of structure and agency. The life course perspective has been successfully applied to empirical research in a wide range of sociological as well as demographic studies. In line with the development of the life course approach also migration and integration issues have become core topics of debate in society and are subject of a growing number of studies over the past years. Despite this similar development in time, exchanges between the life course approach and migration research are still rather limited. Reviewing the booming migration literature in Europe it is striking that the large majority of studies do not or only partially M. Wingens () Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS), University of Bremen, 28334 Bremen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] H. de Valk Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute the Hague and Interface Demography, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, PO Box 11650, 2502 AR The Hague, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] M. Windzio Institute for Empirical and Applied Sociology (EMPAS), University of Bremen, 28334 Bremen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] C. Aybek Department of Political Science, University of Siegen, 57068 Siegen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] M. Wingens et al. (eds.), A Life-Course Perspective on Migration and Integration, 1 DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1545-5 1, © Springer ScienceCBusiness Media B.V. 2011 2 M. Wingens et al. use the sociological life course approach. Even though a study already carried out in the early twentieth century became a classical study in migration research as well as in the life course literature. In the “The Polish Peasant in Europe and America” (1918–1920), the authors Thomas and Znaniecki basically apply a life course approach to the study of Polish migrants coming to the US. They aimed to explain social changes and changes in, for example family relations, by focusing on the interaction between individual migrants and the host society. This line of research has however not been fully taken further in research since then. Even though migration has become one of the major factors in population change in Europe today (Coleman 2008; Taran 2009) and the resulting significant amount of research in social sciences, the main focus of recent studies has been on the position of migrants in education and the labour market as well as on issues of identity and belonging (Heath et al. 2008; Van Tubergen 2005; Verkuyten 2001). Studies mainly aim to explain the specific position of migrants after migration. In demography, studies have looked at specific transitions like timing of the first child or intermarriage with native partners (Coleman 1994; Gonzalez-Ferrer´ 2006; Kalmijn and van Tubergen 2006; Milewski 2008). In the study of international migration moves different, often economic explanations of migration decisions are taken. Only recently more emphasis has been put on the linked lives and the role of family and other networks for facilitating the migration move (Castles and Miller 2009). That the life course approach is only limitedly used in migration studies is at least puzzling: Understanding migrants’ behaviour and explaining the cumulative effects resulting from their actions which, in turn, are embedded in societal structures and framed by institutions, requires just the kind of dynamic research approach the sociological life course perspective suggests. This is even more so the case for studies on integration issues, as integration processes actually directly refer to life course processes, be it inter-generational (cohort differences) or intra-generational (individual careers). At the same time most studies in this domain focus on the position of migrants in society by studying the process of settlement in the host society only. The purpose of this book is to link the sociological life course approach and migration research more explicitly and provide clear suggestions on how to take this further. A compilation of empirical studies in this book shows how the life course approach can be taken up in the study of migration and migrant populations. In each of these empirical studies the authors focus on one particular aspect of migration or integration and its link with the study of the life course. In this way we aim to further elaborate on potential connections between both research traditions. In order to make fruitful use and combine both strands of research one needs of course to be aware of the starting points and background of both traditions. This introduction gives an overview of the life course approach and presents its theoretical foundations and basic concepts. A further exploration of links between migration/integration research and the sociology of the life course will be provided in the conclusion. A sociological life course approach to migration focuses on the dynamic interplay of societal structuring and institutional framing of migrants’ life courses and the 1 The Sociological Life Course Approach and Research on Migration and Integration 3 patterns of migrants’ biographical mastering of transitions and coordinating of life spheres. We hold that this perspective provides a conceptual framework and bears an analytical potential which so far has not been fully exploited by migration research. 1.1 Delimiting the Sociological Life Course Approach