Non-migrants’ interethnic relationships with migrants: the role of the residential area, the workplace, and attitudes toward migrants from a longitudinal perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the determinants of interethnic relationships between non-migrants and migrants in Germany. A large body of literature documents that such relationships generate positive outcomes for individual migrants as well as non-migrants and the social cohesion of host-societies at large. Previous research tends to focus on the migrant side, thereby neglecting the factors enabling non-migrants’ interethnic relationships. Moreover, the existing research on non-migrants exclusively uses cross-sectional data for causal inferences. In contrast, this paper draws on longitudinal data, thus providing a more comprehensive and empirically rigorous picture of the determinants of interethnic relationships. The paper identifies possible determinants of non-migrants’ interethnic relationships, combining them into a single analytical framework that allows for gauging their relative importance. Moderately high migrant shares in the neighbourhood are found to be connected to more interethnic relationships, while a higher share of foreigners in the wider region only has a positive effect for the employed. Neither employment status nor migrant share at work are found to be connected to non-migrants’ interethnic relationships. Finally, persons feeling threatened by immigration and migrants are largely found to be less likely to have interethnic relationships, while sympathy with migrants works in the opposite direction.

KEYWORDS:

• Social integration
• interethnic relationships
• longitudinal study
• bridging ties
• SOEP

Acknowledgements

I thank Martin Kroh, Jannes Jacobsen, Magdalena Krieger, Lea-Maria Löbel, Lisa Pagel, and Diana Schacht for helpful comments on this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Theoretically, ethnic diversity and the share of migrants within a neighbourhood are not related in a strictly linear fashion. However, in European countries, high migrant shares and high ethnic diversity typically go hand-in-hand, as migrants are rarely the majority and are typically composed of various origin groups (Häußermann 2007, 463).

2 For example, German police force employment is restricted for non-EU citizens (GDP 2011).

3 In the 2013 and 2015 waves, the exact question formulation was altered slightly, although the possible answers remained the same. In 2013 and 2015, it referred to ‘persons who themselves or whose parents are not from Germany’ instead of ‘persons of foreign origin’. For some discussion of the consequences of this change, see the descriptive results and analytic strategy sections of this paper.

4 As the Microcensus 2013 and 2015 are not available yet, wave 2012 was used for these years.

5 In order to simulate meeting opportunities on the job as closely as possible, regional variation was taken into account.

6 Both the Microcensus and the SOEP provide their occupational classification according to the Klassification der Berufe 1992 scheme (see Destatis 1992).

7 Cross-sectional weights at the person level, as provided by SOEP Group (Kroh, Kühne, and Siegers 2015), are employed.

8 If the reference group is changed to the part-time employment in the employed only models, full-time workers have comparably lower chances for interethnic relationships in the random-effects model, but marginally higher chances in the fixed-effects model. Those in marginal and irregular employment have higher chances.

9 In the random-effects model only including the employed (Model 2a), respondents still in education were excluded and no regression parameters were calculated for this category.