Database and Operationalization

My data base is the German Mikrozensus of the year 2005. The sample census is an annual survey representative of Germany’s total population, organized and carried out by the Statistical Offices of the federal and the regional states. One percent of all households are obliged to take part in this survey.⁶

The research population in this analysis is restricted to individuals who were born abroad and immigrated to Germany⁷between 1987 and 2003 when they were under the age of 18. Hence, I follow Rumbaut’s broad definition of the “1.5 generation” as persons immigrating as minors (Rumbaut2004: 1166, Clauss and Nauck2009: 7).⁸ Within this population those who immigrated aged 0–5 serve as the reference group.

They did not experience the change of national school systems and hence resemble the second generation, but did face the risk of missing part of kindergarten or other aspects of a German speaking environment.

6The following results are based on the full sample made accessible on-site at the Statistical Office Berlin-Brandenburg, Forschungsdatenzentrum (FDZ).

7Only those are included who lived in the former West-German regional states (Bundesl ¨ander) including West-Berlin in the year 2005. The overwhelming majority of immigrants live in this part of Germany.

8This broad definition of the 1.5 generation is the ‘average’ of the “1.75 cohort who arrived as pre-school children”, the more strictly defined “1.5 generation, ages 6–12” and the “1.25 cohort, ages 13–17” (Rumbaut2004: 1181).

In order to measure educational attainment in terms of school-leaving certificates, the subsample is restricted to immigrants who, in 2005, were at least 18 years old. For pragmatic reasons, those individuals who still attended higher secondary education (gymnasiale Oberstufe), leading to the high-level certificate (Abitur), were included in the category of individuals who had already attained this certificate.

The other categories of the target variable are ‘no certificate’/‘low-level-certificate’

(Hauptschulabschluss) and ‘mid-level certificate’ (Mittlere Reife). Collapsing ‘no certificate’ and ‘low-level certificate’ is mainly due to reduced numbers. But one can also argue that not only youngsters without school certificates but also those with Hauptschulabschluss face a high risk of remaining without further vocational training (Baethge et al.2007: 39–41) – hence the joint category of the educationally poor.⁹

In order to take the family background of these young adults into account, the sample used in the analysis presented below is further restricted to individuals who lived in their parents’ households. As moving out of the parents’ home is socially selective (the educationally better-off tend to move out at a later stage in their life course), an upper age-limit is applied: The subsample is confined to the 87% of 18-to 20-year-olds who still lived at their parents’ home (for a similar methodological procedure see Kristen and Granato2004: 129–132).¹⁰

The key independent variable, age at migration, is recoded according to the major institutionalized phases of schooling, i.e. whether a child immigrated

• in pre-school years (age 0–5; comprising 38% of my sample): children who have the opportunity to attend (part of) German kindergarten education and to begin learning German before being enrolled in school,

• during (German) primary education (age 6–10; 37%): children who experience the change of school systems, but have up to 4 year time to catch up before tracking takes place,

• during secondary education (age 11–17; 25%): children who have to be sorted into one of the school-tracks. Due to the number of cases, only the first graph showing bivariate results distinguishes those youths who immigrated aged 16 or 17 and hence beyond the German age limit of fulltime compulsory education.

Parental education is operationalized as the most advanced school-leaving certificate of father or mother using the same categories as applied in case of their children and serves an indicator of the parents’ “incorporated cultural capital” (Bourdieu 1983: 187). As can be seen in Table2.A.1(annex), which contains the number of cases, distributions and cross tabulations of all independent variables with the target

9The following analysis presupposes that immigrant youths taking part in the Mikrozensus thought indeed of their German school certificates when answering the respective question.

10In two instances I will report descriptive findings for the 1.5 generation immigrants without this upper age limit, i.e. 18- to 35-year-olds (larger case numbers, but no information on their parents).

variable, almost half of the parents show low levels of cultural capital attained in their home country. A quarter obtained a high-level certificate.¹¹

As to the operationalization of the dichotomously constructed variable ‘legal status upon arrival’, Aussiedler are not directly identifiable in the Mikrozensus.¹² The identification of Aussiedler relies on a rather complex operationalization using several variables available in the sample census. Individuals are regarded as Aussiedler (56.0% of the subsample)¹³ if they were born outside Germany, possess German citizenship, if their former or second non-German citizenship is Polish, Rumanian or ‘ex-Soviet’, and if naturalization took place within 2 years after arrival.¹⁴ The comparison group, the ‘other immigrants’ (44.0%), arrived in Germany as foreigners. It comprises both immigrants who remained non-German citizens as well as immigrants who were naturalized by 2005, but were not identified as Aussiedler. Because citizens of the EU-15 form only 4.6% of the immigrant subsample and ‘family’ immigrants are not identifiable as such in the Mikrozensus, these non-Aussiedler who were exposed to a neutral mode of governmental reception cannot be differentiated from those with a negative legal status. Among the non-Aussiedler, immigrants from Turkey (8.1%) and Ex-Yugoslavia (8.7%) are the two largest national groups. The former came as family immigrants and asylum seekers; the latter were mainly disadvantaged civil war refugees.

While the Mikrozensus was not designed for a detailed analysis of determinants of educational achievement and learning processes, secondary analysis allows to control for a couple of structural variables traditionally found to be influential for educational attainment, namely gender, the occupational status of the father (or the single mother), the number of children in the household as indicator of the inner-family social capital (Coleman1988) and per-capita financial resources available to a child. The regional state (dichotomously recoded) and the size of the community where the individual lived and (probably) went to school serve as two indicators of the regional supply of high-level secondary-school types (see Table2.A.1in the annex).

11Although in the Mikrozensus-questionnaire foreign-born parents had to fit their non-German educational degrees into the pattern of German certificates, there are very few missing answers and the positive correlation between parents’ and children’s educational attainment shows the expected pattern.

12In previous waves of the Mikrozensus like in most other official statistics or surveys, Aussiedler are counted as German citizens and are not identifiable at all.

13Almost three times as many non-German immigrant children than Aussiedler-children arrived in Germany between 1987 and 2003, but many of former left again before the survey was conducted in the year 2005.

14A comparison of ‘Mikrozensus-Aussiedler’ (including those with missing answers to some of the identification criteria) to my analysis with another data base, the German Youth Survey 2003 (Deutsche Jugendsurvey), where participants were simply asked whether they came from an Aussiedler family (S¨ohn2008: 414), revealed very similar results regarding key variables such as educational attainment (S¨ohn2011).