The influence of family involvement on the social contacts of refugees in Germany
Author: Tobias Roth
Cooperation partner: Manuel Siegert
In the course of the large-scale influx of people seeking protection, particularly from 2015 onwards, there were also discussions in Germany about how family reunification should be regulated and what impact family involvement has on the integration of refugees. Against this background, we use data from the TransFAR project to analyse how the family involvement of refugees influences the number of own-ethnic persons and of Germans in the network. We argue that maintaining family relationships takes time, which limits the opportunities to build more intensive extra-familial relationships. Accordingly, refugees with family ties should have (somewhat) smaller non-family networks than those living alone. Against the background of the model of intergenerational integration (Esser 2008), however, we also assume that the benefits resulting from relationships with own-ethnic persons differ from benefits resulting from relationships with ethnic Germans: Contacts with Germans have a strong instrumental-practical benefit, as Germans, in contrast to own-ethnic persons and family members, are familiar with the structures and customs in Germany. Accordingly, they can hardly be substituted by family (own-ethnic) contacts. In contrast, the emotional benefit should take centre stage in the case of ethnic contacts. However, this is even and also more easily accessible in the case of family contacts, which means that own-ethnic contacts can be substituted by family. In fact, our initial empirical analyses indicate that close family members living in Germany (partners, parents, siblings) have no influence on the number of Germans in the network, but they do have a negative effect on the number of extra-familial own-ethnic contacts. In this still rather early phase of integration, the family involvement of refugees therefore does not appear to hinder their social integration or encourage them to withdraw into their own ethnic community.