“Reactive Ethnicity” or “Assimilation”? Statements, Arguments, and First Empirical Evidence for Labor Migrants in Germany

Abstract

In this article, we scrutinize the often stated assumption that labor migrants in Germany turn away from integration and reaffirm their ethnicity by examining their identificational, cognitive, and social assimilation processes. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel, we present trend analyses of different hostland- and homeland-related indicators for the past fifteen years. Results are presented separately for first- and second-generation migrants from Turkey, the EU, and the former Yugoslavia. While not all assimilation-related indicators change a great deal over time, they show at least a substantial difference between the first and the second generation. With regard to the homeland-related indicators, the results by no means suggest that Turkish migrants try to compensate for their comparatively disadvantaged social status by revitalizing ethnic cultural habits or homeland-oriented identifications.