Migration background

In Austria, it refers to people whose parents were both born abroad; depending on their place of birth, a distinction is also made between first and second generation migrants.

The term was brought about as a reaction to changing demographics: with naturalized persons, late repatriates [de] (with German citizenship) and children of foreigners born in Germany who, under certain conditions, had German citizenship following a legal reform, more than 7 million people lived in Germany at the beginning of the 21st century and their migration experiences should be taken into account.

For example, the term appeared in 1998 in the tenth report on children and young people by the German Youth Institute [de],[6] and in the PISA study of 2003.

[14] In 2016, the Federal Statistical Office of Germany changed the definition as part of a “typification of migration background” so that it is now “easier to understand”.

In detail, this definition includes immigrant and non-immigrant foreigners, immigrant and non-immigrant naturalised citizens , (late) repatriates and the descendants of these groups who were born as Germans.” To explain why the old definition was inadequate, the Federal Statistical Office explains: “There is also a small group of people who were born abroad with German citizenship and whose parents do not have a migration background.

Nevertheless, the Federal Statistical Office restricts this: “The displaced persons of the Second World War and their descendants do not belong to the population with a migration background, since they and their parents were born with German citizenship”.

[17] According to Article 3 of the Basic Law and the General Equal Treatment Act [de] (AGG), it is forbidden to attach legal consequences to a person's "ethnic origin".

Two years after the entry into force of the Integration and Participation Act in Berlin, which provides for the recording of the proportion of people with a migration background in various social groups, the Berlin Senate announced in 2012 in response to a parliamentary question that correct measurements in the public service or among politicians would require surveys that are not legally permissible.

The number of trainees and civil servant candidates, broken down by whether they have a migration background or not, by career or professional field and by training occupation, must be presented”.

[35] The sociologist Kenneth Horvath also criticized the fact that the migration background serves as a category of difference to define the "other" and is in the ethnicizing tradition of terms such as foreigner.

Furthermore, the concept does not statistically cover all those who are "meant" by it, but on the other hand it counts people who are not actually the subject of the discourse on migration backgrounds.

[36] In its 2021 report, the independent expert commission on integration capacity [de] appointed by the federal government recommended abandoning the statistical category of migration background because it now covers a very large and heterogeneous group, mixes nationality and migration experience at an analytical level, is unnecessarily complex and obscures rather than explains the causes of inequalities.

[41] According to the results of the 2011 census, 29.0% of the population with a migration background are Roman Catholic, 15.9% are members of a Protestant regional church, 6.5% are Eastern Orthodox, and 0.5% belong to Jewish communities.

Muslims are provisionally included in the category "not belonging to any public religious community", which makes up a total of 36.1% of the population with a migration background.

[42] According to the Federal Statistical Office, the number of people with a migration background in 2005 was as follows: Europe is particularly important for immigration to Germany in quantitative terms.

The eleven most important countries of origin in 2008 were: Statistical material can also be found in the ten graphics of a Spiegel Online article from 17 October 2010.

[43] The major cities with a population with a migration background of at least 40% are mainly located in Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia.

The extent to which a migration background represents a medical risk factor for health-endangering substance use must be considered in a differentiated manner.

[79][80] An OECD study from 2018 examined what percentage of students (with and without a migration background) have basic knowledge in the subjects of science , reading and mathematics.

Likewise, the proportion of students of Vietnamese origin who attend high school has been above average for years, as studies by Beuchling have shown.

According to Cornelia Kristen (2002), students from some migrant groups receive worse school grades despite achieving similar results to others.

[citation needed] This result takes on particular significance in view of the pronounced ethnic segregation tendencies in the German primary school system.

– A comparative analysis of performance and engagement in PISA 2003 ) determined whether migrant children are just as successful in the school system as students without a migration background.

The families of students born in Germany with an immigrant background are mostly of Turkish origin and these people perform particularly poorly in PISA.

The same applies to other groups of origin and the areas of science and reading skills: in mathematics It is possible that the poor performance of young people with a migration background in PISA is a result of language-heavy test items.

It is clear that the low average competence of students with a migration background is not due to poorer results in language-dependent sub-competencies.

After the start of the migration background survey (HEGA 07/2011-07), the Federal Employment Agency (BA) announced that it is obliged to collect data on migration backgrounds and to take them into account in its labor market and basic security statistics (Section 281 Paragraph 2 SGB III, Section 53 Paragraph 7 Sentence 1 SGB II).

The definition of people with a migration background in Austria corresponds to that of the Recommendations for the 2010 censuses of population and housing issued by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

[90] The recording of migration background or other comparable statistical or socio-demographic categories varies worldwide both in terms of data collection and the aggregation of domestically and foreign-born populations.

The German ethnologist Martin Sökefeld [de], on the other hand, points out that the category was created to identify discrimination and counteract it with support measures.