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2 Emigration rates of German citizens and foreign residents in the Federal Republic of Germany (1991-2012) (Source: Federal Statistical Office (author calculations))
Source publication
Sociological as well as economic research stresses the impact of so called ‘push and pull factors’ on individual migration decisions. These push and pull factors are often understood as a combination of individual socio-economic and socio-demographic determinants and institutional contexts in home and (possible) destination countries. However, with...
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Objective
We aim to investigate the effect of income and housing satisfaction on self-rated health in different life stages.
Design
A population-based panel study (German Socio-Economic Panel).
Participants
The final sample consisted of 384 280 observations from 50 004 persons covering the period between 1994 and 2016.
Outcome measures
Average m...
Citations
Return migration intentions are complex and are not necessarily followed by future return migration. This study compares successful return or repeated migration with self‐declared return intentions. It takes advantage of the latest and unique German Socio‐Economic Panel (SOEP) survey dropout studies and fieldwork to observe a wider return migration window than reported in the literature to answer the question of whether return migration intentions eventually coincided with actual emigration behaviours. Moreover, return migration estimates are examined over this long‐observed return window. This empirical analysis explores (1) whether return intentions eventually materialize, (2) whether they can eventually predict actual return behaviours and (3) whether the determinants of actual and predicted return based on intentions are similar. Overall, my results support that migration intentions can predict actual return behaviour. While the underlying results show discrepancies in the predictors of return intentions and those of actual returns, they show emigration intentions as significant predictors of actual future emigration. Moreover, the findings suggest that life satisfaction significantly correlates with the individual intention to remigrate. Both effects are highly significant.
In many economically advanced countries, a relevant proportion of the population migrates across national boundaries every year. For these individuals, migrating abroad brings benefits (e.g. monetary returns) but also potential pitfalls, as migration is accompanied by profound changes in everyday life. However, there are mainly cross-sectional studies of individuals’ migration experiences that analyse the effects of migration on these individuals’ quality of life. This study fills this gap by examining shifts in the subjective well-being (SWB) of internationally mobile German citizens from a longitudinal perspective using data from the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study and fixed effects panel regressions. To observe SWB over the course of actual migration events, we drew on a sample of repeat migrants: Germans who returned to Germany shortly before the panel and emigrated again during the panel. Consistent with methodologically comparable studies on internal migration, the analyses show a happiness dip before migration and an increase in SWB with the migration event. The increase is consistent, tends to be more pronounced than that observed in internal migration studies, and to some extent persists after the first few years of migration. Moreover, the results suggest that the increase in SWB systematically depends on the influence that individuals can exert on their migration decisions. Individuals without a partner show the highest increases in SWB, followed by so-called leading partners, partners of couples with a mutual migration decision, and trailing partners.
Intention to emigrate has been one of the most challenging issues globally over the last decade for both migrant-sending and receiving countries. Rising emigration intentions trigger migration attempts and brain drain, while migrant-receiving countries are challenged by illegal emigration. Self-perceived trust in government is one of the fundamental determinants of citizens' emigration aspirations. This research applies path analyses to explore direct and indirect effects of trust in government on emigrating intentions in a post-soviet country – Azerbaijan. Using a pool of two social survey data (N=4092,n_Male=2106,n_Female=1986,〖Mean〗_Age=31.82) within a serial mediation analysis framework, we conclude that the trust in government has a significant direct (65-70%) and indirect (30-35%) negative impact on emigration aspirations among the people of Azerbaijan. The relationship is mediated by self-reported life satisfaction. Perceived income adequacy also mediates the relationship indirectly via life satisfaction. A key novelty of the study is that, contrary to popular belief, emigration aspirations in Azerbaijan are revealed to be less economic in motivation and are mainly explained by the lack of trust in government, which also reduces individuals' satisfaction with life. Therefore, improving the quality of public services and the trust in government institutions would reverse intentions to emigrate. The research can be replicated in other developing countries, and the findings can be used to design policies aimed at controlling international emigration issues.
The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the happiness factors and assess the performance of machine learning techniques on predicting the happiness levels of European immigrants and natives. Two types of machine learning methods, Ordinal Logistic Regression (OLR) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), are employed for analytical modeling. Our results with a total sample size of 196,724 respondents from nine rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS) indicate that the determinants of happiness for immigrants and natives are significantly inconsistent. Therefore, variables should be specifically selected to predict the happiness levels of these two different groups. The sensitivity analysis shows that satisfaction with life, subjective general health, and the highest level of education are the three most prominent determinants that contribute to the happiness of immigrants and natives. The overall accuracies of OLR and ANN baseline models are >80%. This can be further improved by building models for each individual country. The application of OLR and ANN implies that machine learning algorithms can be a useful tool for predicting happiness levels. The greater knowledge of migration and happiness will allow us to better understand the decision-making processes and construct more effective policies.
The chapter asks about possible causal effects of migration on subjective well-being (SWB) measured by self-reported overall life satisfaction. By combining the emigration sample of the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS) with a quasi-counterfactual sample of internationally non-mobile Germans provided by the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) the difference-in-difference analyses show that emigration is actually accompanied by an increase in SWB. Based on propensity score matching procedures and compared to non-mobile German stayers, German first-time emigrants show a significant increase in SWB shortly after arrival in their host country. For most emigrants, migration pays off not only economically via increasing incomes but also with regard to an increase in life satisfaction. However, the underlying analysis has certain limitations and we therefore discuss the significance of the presented evidence and consequences and challenges for future research.
Migration research developed significantly in the past decades. However, with the life course approach and the concept of transnational migration, there are still two different, as yet largely unconnected conceptual perspectives on migration. Both approaches have their merits but also their shortcomings. This paper tries to overcome these shortcomings by combining the advantages of both perspectives to suggest a unified theoretical concept of transnational life courses (TNLC). TNLC builds on the multidimensional understanding of transnational migration research that (potential) migrants live in multiple social and cultural spaces leading to parallel assimilation and dissimilation processes. This perspective is merged with the life course approach with its chronologically ordered understanding of causality relying on preceding determinants and subsequent outcomes in form of events and periods. Based on data provided by the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS) some simple empirical analyses were conducted to illustrate the potential of the TNLC approach.
