Socio-spatial conditions of immigrant integration and wellbeing

The project collects original, geospacial data on ethno-religious organizational infrastructures (associations, houses of worship, groceries, etc.) in Germany and combines them with survey data to investigate beneficial and detrimental effects of ethnic enclaves and segregation on immigrant integration and wellbeing, and how these differ across ethnic groups and generations. Results show that cultural distance of migrants' sending countries to receiving societies is a major driver of the establishment of distinct minority civil societies, which enhance life satisfaction particularly for migrants oriented towards their origin countries. The project also looks at the mobility of recent refugees and finds that those who leave the places where they were originally allocated tend to move to places with weak labor markets, partly because they are attracted by ethnic infrastructures.

This project is based on the the WELLMOB project, that received initial funding from the German Science Foundation.