Partnership Living Arrangements of Young Adult Migrants in Germany

Anne-Kristin Kuhnt , University of Rostock
Sandra Krapf, Federal Institute for Population Research

Immigration is a common phenomenon in European societies and raises questions of whether migrants adapt their behaviors to the behaviors of non-migrants. While a growing number of studies analyse labor market and fertility behaviors, only few studies have focussed on the prevalence of marriage, cohabitation, and living without a partner among young adult migrants as another dimension of social integration. Based on this research gap, our study investigates partnership living arrangements of young adult immigrants (N=16,052), immigrants descendants (N=13,092) and non-migrants (N=113,333) aged 18 to 40 years in Germany. We distinguish between Ethnic German migrants (Spätaussiedler) and Turkish migrants, the two largest migrant groups in Germany. First and second generation of Turkish migrants are investigated separately, while the second-generation Ethnic German migrants are too young for such analyses. We draw on data from the German Microcensus 2009 and 2013, a 1% sample of all households in Germany. This representative dataset contains information on living arrangements and migration background of women and men living in Germany. We present descriptive statistics and Average Marginal Effects (AME) of multinomial logistic regression models. The vast majority of Turkish migrants is married while cohabitation is virtually inexistent. The second-generation Turkish migrants have a similar pattern while non-migrants were less likely to be married and cohabitation is a common phenomenon. The pattern of Ethnic German migrants lies in-between. This indicates that differences in family values, probably related to norms of marriage age, seem to be strong and unmarried cohabitation is less accepted.

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 Presented in Session 74. Interethnic Union Formation and Dissolution