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Description
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Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Washington, DC
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On April 25, 2006, Dr. Amelie Constant, Senior Research Associate and Deputy Program Director of Migration at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn and Senior Visiting Fellow at AICGS, gave a talk titled "The Immigration Integration Debate: German Problems and Solutions."
Dr. Constant stated in her presentation that immigration is not only a complex and controversial topic, it is also a very timely one. Migration is a global phenomenon, which brings about a number of fears. While the worries in the United States are mostly about the impact of immigrants on wages and homeland security, the issues in Germany center more on legal immigrants, their integration, and the employment levels of immigrants. There are also problems that are common to both countries; current debates focus on citizenship and language tests, ethnic identity, multicultural societies vs. assimilation of immigrants, and selective migration. Dr. Constant argued that immigration reforms are clearly necessary in both countries.
Drawing from her findings from part of an IZA Discussion paper, Dr. Constant contended that the heart of the problem lies in the ethnic identity of immigrants. In comparison to ethnicity, which relates to the origin of a person, ethnic identity signifies the degree to which the immigrant commits to or identifies with the host culture and society, and to which they commit or identify with the culture and society of their origin. Dr. Constant stated that there are five elements that capture ethnic identity: language, culture, ethnic self-identification, ethnic interaction, and migration history. In order to measure the intensity of ethnic identity of first generation migrants after immigration, Dr. Constant and her colleagues used a concept termed the "ethnosizer." As a one-dimensional understanding of ethnic identity, the ethnosizer measures the commitment to the host country compared to the commitment to the country of origin. As a two-dimensional concept, which in fact is closer to reality, ethnic identity is distinguished among four categories: assimilation, integration, marginalization, and separation. Assimilation means that the immigrant identifies with the host country rather than with the country of origin, while separation indicates a stronger identification with the home country. Integration signifies the identification of the immigrant with both countries without conflicts, whereas marginalization means the person feels detached from the home and host country. After rating each of the components of ethnic identity, the ethnosizer can be specified as a number.
The findings of the study showed that Spaniards assimilated and integrated best, while Turks scored lowest on assimilation and integration, but highest on separation. Furthermore, female migrants are more distant from the home country than male migrants, which could be due to weak cultural or language integration. Other interesting findings included that young migrants are assimilated or integrated the best and that immigrants with a college degree or higher education in their home country integrate well, but don't assimilate.
The degree of ethnic identity can then be used to determine the impact on the labor market, and Dr. Constant provided several examples of this connection. For one, it can be concluded that the integration of migrant women into German society is economically better than assimilation. For male migrants, however, assimilation and integration are equally beneficial to the society and economy. Furthermore, it shows that ethnic identity is an important factor in the integration level of immigrants. Overall, for future immigration reforms to be successful, they must be comprehensive and take the different ethnic identities of the immigrants into account.
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AICGS is grateful to the Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA) for their support of this program.
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