First child of immigrant workers and their descendants in West Germany: Interrelation of events, disruption, or adaptation?

Nadja Milewski

doi:10.4054/DemRes.2007.17.29

Volume 17 - Article 29 | Pages 859–896

First child of immigrant workers and their descendants in West Germany: Interrelation of events, disruption, or adaptation?

By Nadja Milewski

Date received:

1 Oct 2006

Date published:

20 Dec 2007

Word count:

8135

Keywords:

event history analysis, fertility, international migration, migrant workers from South/Southeastern Europe, West Germany

DOI:

10.4054/DemRes.2007.17.29

This article is part of the Special Collection 6 "Interdependencies in the Life Course: Family, Fertility, and Migration"

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Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of immigration on the transition to motherhood among women from Turkey, Italy, Spain, Greece, and the former Yugoslavia in West Germany. A hazard-regression analysis is applied to data of the German Socio-Economic Panel study. We distinguish between the first and second immigrant generation. The results show that the transition rates to a first birth of first-generation immigrants are elevated shortly after they move country. Elevated birth risks that occur shortly following the immigration are traced back to an interrelation of events - these are migration, marriage, and first birth.
We do not find evidence of a fertility-disruption effect after immigration. The analysis indicates that second-generation immigrants are more adapted to the lower fertility levels of West Germans than their mothers’ generation is.