Department of Political and Social Sciences Turkish migrants and native Germans compared: The effect of inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic friendships on the

Department of Political and Social Sciences

Turkish migrants and native Germans compared:

The effect of inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic friendships on the transition from

unemployment to work

Bram Lancee & Anne Hartung

Presentation prepared for seminar

‘Networks, Markets and Organizations’

Groningen, August 28th.


Introduction

• Social capital is found to be an important asset on the labour market.

• Often it is argued that returns depend on the form of SC.• This is particularly the case when comparing the effect of

SC for migrant and native residents, and addressing the bonding-bridging differentiation.


Introduction II

The main contribution of this paper is to compare the effect of different forms of social capital (intra- and inter-ethnic friendships) on the duration of unemployment, for Turkish and native residents in Germany.

• These different forms of SC are not compared for these groups before.

• The duration of UE as a dependent variables is (although highly relevant) hardly ever used in SC research.

Department of Political and Social Sciences Social capital

“Those with more social capital will better be able to realize their goals or defend their interests. Social capital is a relational resource, having ties to others enables one to have access to their resources, to borrow them, so to speak.” (Flap 2004: 5)

Many jobs are obtained through referrals:

• Native Germans: ~30% of jobs obtained through social network, immigrants in Germany almost 50%

• Question here is not how many jobs are found through social networks, but to what extent different types of social capital can be associated with a shorter unemployment duration.


‚Friendships‘ as social capital

• We measure social capital as friendships.– Friends can provide information that is useful on the

labour market:

Create opportunities for upward mobility on the labour market.

– Strength of weak(er) tie argument.

(Hence, we expect that having friendships reduces the duration of unemployment, both for Germans and Turks. )


Bonding & Bridging

• Bonding refers to connections within groups, bridging to connections between groups.

• ‘Between’ we define as inter-ethnic connections• ‘Whereas bonding is to get by, bridging is to get ahead’.• However, statement dominantly argued from a

“resource-poor” group, such as immigrants.• Hence we can expect differences in the effect of having

inter- and intra-ethnic friendships.• Useful to make the distinction between the bridging- and

the resource-argument.


Two arguments

• Bridging argument. Social capital as connections between different groups: it is bridging the ‘ethnic divide’ that matters: network diversification, hence unique

information and opportunities come into reach. • Resource argument. Social capital as a capital: it is

accessing an environment with useful resources that yields positive returns. It is host country-specific resources matter.

• (For migrants: “Compensating” discrimination argument)

Department of Political and Social Sciences Bonding, bridging, resource-poor,

resource-rich


Inter-ethnic friendships

For Turks, Inter-ethnic friendships are bridging across the ethnic divide, plus accessing a resource-rich environment. It implies accessing host-country-specific resources.

For Germans, it is bridging the ethnic divide, but into a resource-poor environment.

Hence:

H1a: The positive effect of inter-ethnic friendships on finding employment is larger for Turks than it is for Germans.

Department of Political and Social Sciences Intra-ethnic friendships

For Germans, intra-ethnic friendships imply accessing a resource-rich environment.

For Turks intra-ethnic friendships are neither bridging, nor accessing a resource-rich environment.

Hence:

H1b: The positive effect of having intra-ethnic friendships on finding employment is larger for Germans than it is for Turks.

Counter-argument: Intra-ethnic friendships can be beneficial for Turks, since they may provide access to information for employment in the ‘ethnic’ economy.

Department of Political and Social Sciences Social and human capital

• Social capital -seen as accessing a resource-rich environment- is likely to have a different effect for high and low educated.

• Effect may be larger for those that possess little resources themselves, i.e. those with a low education.

• Effect may be larger for those that possess little host-country specific resources, i.e. first generation Turkish migrants with a low education.

Department of Political and Social Sciences Hypothesis 2

• H2a: The positive effect of accessing a resource-

rich network (i.e. friendships with German natives) on finding employment is larger for those with a lower education, when being compared to those with a higher education.

• H2b: The mechanism of H2a is stronger for first generation Turkish migrants than for second generation Turkish migrants and German native residents.

• Limitation: we only know ethnic group of friend, not the actual resources a friend can provide (so probably better to limit H2 to 1st gen Turks?)

Department of Political and Social Sciences Methodology

• Data and construction of the sample:– GSOEP, 1996-2007 – 6,367 persons with 7,890 unemployment spells of which 39.9% end in a

transition to work, left censored cases excluded. • Dependent variable:

– transition into employment– duration of unemployment (in months)

• Independent variables:– Intra-ethnic friendships (y/n): 1996, 2001, 2006– Inter-ethnic friendships (y/n): 1996, 2001, 2006

• Ethnic group: Country of birth and nationality• Control variables:

– Education (ISCED), gender, years working expererience (also squared), language proficiency (also squared), year dummies, dummy for former East Germany.

Department of Political and Social Sciences Methodology II

• Event history (survival) analysis:– Continuous time – Hazard rate = measuring the “conditional probability

of event occurrence per unit of time” (Singer and Willett 2003: 474)

– Cox regression (with multiple spells per person)


Some descriptives

Observations with at least one inter-ethnic and/or intra-ethnic friend, by ethnic

group (percentages).

Inter-ethnic ties Intra-ethnic ties

Native Germans 3.7 79.2

First generation Turkish 27.7 55.5

Second generation Turkish 51.4 49.1

Source: GSOEP 1996-2007

Department of Political and Social Sciences Figure 2. Kaplan-Meier survival estimates for the transition from unemployment

to employment, by ethnic group.

0.00

0.25

0.50

0.75

1.00

0 12 24 36 48 60 72 84 96 108 120analysis time

Native German First generation TurkishSecond generation Turkish


Cox regression predicting the transition to employment (hazard ratios; robust standard errors)

M1 :

All

M2 :

1st Gen Turks

M3 :

2nd Gen Turks

M4 :

All

Inter-ethnic friendships 1.085 1.482*** .998 Intra-ethnic friendships 1.046** .955 .927 German friends 1.049** German friends * First generation Turk

1.370**

German friends * Second generation Turk

.862

N of observ. 7890 282 153 7890 N of failures 2974 98 60 2974 Log-likelihood -23346.919 -416.076 -216.012 -23342.980 AIC 46761.838 894.153 490.024 46755.960 BIC 46998.932 1007.052 577.907 47000.028


M5 :

All

M6 :

1st Gen. Turks

M7 :

2nd Gen Turks

M8 :

All low

Education

Low education .751*** .396* 1.245 German friends 1.035 .575 .982 1.055** Low ed.* German friends 1.023 2.934** 1.099 1st gen. Turk * German friends 1.497*** N of observ. 7458 281 153 6170 N of failures 2818 97 60 2261 Log-likelihood -22003.592 -411.445 -216.700 -17199.328 AIC 44061.185 878.890 485.401 34438.656 BIC 44247.945 980.764 564.192 34573.205

Cox regression predicting the transition to employment (hazard ratios; robust standard errors)

Department of Political and Social Sciences Limitations / Discussion

No conclusive information on network– Overall size of network?– Inter-ethnic vs. bridging the socio-economic divide?– Resources available in network?– Network effect vs. Propensity to integrate– Family relations not included (tried and no effect though)– Second-generation little cases– SC included as time-invariant (due to limited measurement occasions)– Change in network due to unemployment?– Alternative explanations?

Department of Political and Social Sciences Summary I

• For 1st gen Turks, inter-ethnic friendships reduce UE duration

• For native Germans, intra-ethnic friendships reduce UE duration

Turkish first generation migrants

Native Germans

Department of Political and Social Sciences Summary II

• What seems to matter is accessing a host-country specific network: both for Germans and for Turks having friendships with Germans reduces UE duration.

• However, having friendships is most effective when they are both bridging and accessing a host-country specific environment, like friendships with Germans for the 1st gen Turks.

The effect of having friendships with native Germans is highest for first generation Turks with a low education:

• higher than 1st gen Turks with a high education• higher than native Germans with a low education.


Thank you for your attention!

[email protected]

http://www.eui.eu/Personal/Researchers/Lancee/

Documents

Department of Political and Social Sciences Turkish migrants and native Germans compared: The effect of inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic friendships on the