About GERPS

GERPS is a longitudinal survey that examines individual consequences of international migration from a life course perspective. The survey follows a nationally representative sample of recently emigrated and returned German citizens aged between 20 and 70 years. The panel currently covers a period of three years, captured by five waves.

News

News

29.08.2024 | The subjective well-being of German returnees

Nico Stawarz (BiB) gave a talk about changes in the subjective well-being of Germans who returned to Germany from abroad at the 16th ESA conference in Porto.

The study is a collaboration with Andreas Genoni (BiB, GERPS, NCCR on the move) and Martijn Hendriks (University of Rotterdam).

23.08.2024 | Emigrating from Germany

Marcel Erlinghagen wrote a short online article about emigration from Germany for the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb). The article provides a great overview of relevant aspects in connection with emigration from Germany, a topic that has been neglected in the past but is now increasingly gaining attention. The article is written in German and can be found here .

05.07.2024 | External voting and European identity of mobile Europeans

Nils Witte (GERPS, BiB, Goethe-University Frankfurt) presented a paper about turnout in European parliament elections among mobile Europeans at the 21. IMISCOE Annual Conference at ISCTE, Lisbon.

01.07.2024 | New book on transnational family relations of German emigrants

Marcel Erlinghagen (GERPS, University of Duisburg-Essen) and Karsten Hank (University of Cologne) published a book on transnational family relations of German emigrants. Drawing on unique data from the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS), their book comprises empirical studies on various aspects of recent German emigrants’ transnational relationships to core family members, specifically intimate partners, parents, and children.

Moreover, the authors reflect on conceptual and empirical challenges in previous work on transnational family relations, suggesting avenues for future research. The book aims to strengthen the integration of two closely related strands of social research – the sociologies of migration and families – and to add an important new facet to the study of transnational families more generally.

The book has been published by Springer and also features contributions by Lisa Mansfeld and Norbert F. Schneider, two other project members of GERPS. You can find it here.

19.06.2024 | First Ph.D. within the GERPS project

Since Lisa Mansfeld joined our GERPS team in 2019, she has been working intensively on the effects of migration on family processes and the role of these family processes for integration outcomes. Last week, she successfully defended her dissertation and completed her thesis summa cum laude. We congratulate Lisa for this fantastic achievement! Well deserved!

Her cumulative dissertation entitled "Migration and the family: essays on internationally mobile Germans" will be published soon. Two of the four articles are already publicly available in Population Space and Place here and our GERPS anthology.

09.06.2024 | Blog-article: Mobile Europeans love Europe but participate less in European Parliament elections

Despite their strong emotional attachment to the European Union, EU citizens living outside their home country have a reduced chance of voting in European Parliament elections. Bureaucratic hurdles are likely to blame for the low turnout among those currently living abroad. Read more in the LSE blog post by Nils Witte (GERPS, BiB, Goethe-University Frankfurt) and Emanuel Deutschmann (Europa-Universität Flensburg).

03.06.2024 | New publication that compares data quality of online surveys administered on different devices

The study investigates whether different devices produce different data quality. Results were mixed, and differences in data quality across computers, tablets and smartphones were rather small. Higher dropout rates of persons using smartphones remain the major challenge for online surveys. Overall, the results suggest that mixed-device surveys are a promising approach for data collection.

The study was authored by Jean Philippe Décieux (GERPS, BiB, University of Luxembourg) and Philipp E. Sischka (University of Luxembourg), and has been published open access in Sage Open.

10.04.2024 | New publication on personality and migration behaviour

This study uses data from the GERPS and SOEP to examine whether personality traits matter for becoming an internationally mobile person. The findings suggest that the propensity to migrate is significantly related to three dimensions of the Big Five personality traits. Moreover, gender and cultural differences moderated the way how personality and migration were associated.

The study was authored by Jean Philippe Décieux (GERPS, BiB, Université du Luxembourg) and Tobias Altmann (University of Duisburg-Essen), and has been published open access in Population, Space and Place.

19.03.2024 | Is Reactive Cosmopolitanism a thing?

Andreas Genoni (GERPS, BiB, NCCR at University of Neuchâtel) and Nella Geurts (Radboud University, NL) gave an invited talk at the BiB about their ongoing research on the extent to which cosmopolitan identities of migrants are a response to perceived social exclusion.

18.03.2024 | New publication: International migration and shifts in subjective well-being

This study is one of the first to examine shifts in subjective well-being (SWB) in the course of international migration. It finds evidence for increased SWB with the migration, and elevated SWB in the first years after it. For partnered individuals, increases in SWB systematically depend on their influence on the migration decision. Smallest increases are found for trailing partners, and highest increases for leading partners. SWB of singles increased even more.

The study was authored by Andreas Genoni (GERPS, BiB, NCCR at University of Neuchâtel), Nico Stawarz (BiB), Andreas Ette (GERPS, BiB, University of Essex), and Heiko Rüger (BiB, University of Mainz), and published in Migration Studies.

29.01.2024 | Live interview about German emigration and the local labour market

Jean Philippe Décieux (GERPS, BiB) was invited to give a live radio interview on WDR about our project. In light of ongoing debates about skill shortage and consequences for the local labour market in Germany, he also talked about why Germans decide to move abroad. The interview is in German. You can find it here.

23.01.2024 | Acting and feeling European

Nils Witte (GERPS, BiB, Goethe-University Frankfurt) and Emanuel Deutschmann (University of Flensburg) presented ongoing research about the role of recency and region of migration for acting and feeling European. The invited talk was part of a workshop on "Citzenship in a globalizing world" at Utrecht University.

20.09.2023 | Welcome, Antonia!

We are happy to announce that Antonia Görtz (University of Duisburg-Essen) joined our team. She studied sociology at the RWTH Aachen University and will do her doctorate on (dis)integration in the process of migration.

Welcome to the team!

30.08.2023 | What drives the naturalisation intentions of Germans living abroad?

Nils Witte (GERPS, BiB, Goethe-University Frankfurt) presented ongoing research about naturalisation intentions of Germans who live abroad, a project co-authored by Floris Peters (Utrecht University). The talk took place at the 4th Academy of Sociology (AS) conference at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

25.08.2023 | New publication: How Covid-19 has affected return migration of Germans living abroad

The publication finds a moderate but clear association between incidence/mortality in countries of residence and return migration proclivities.

For example, the probability of return from highly affected Mexico was 7.8 percentage points higher than the probability of return from Thailand owed to Covid-19. Findings are robust to various variable definitions and to the inclusion of other macro-level indicators like democratic violations.

The article, authored by Nils Witte (GERPS, BiB, Goethe-University Frankfurt), Andreas Ette (GERPS, BiB), and Nicola Sander (GERPS, BiB) has been published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

24.08.2023 | Scientific talk: Does international migration make people happy?

The 21st annual conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) took place in Rotterdam and hosted a talk by Nico Stawarz (BiB) who showed that moving abroad results in increased levels of subjective well-being.

The presentation is based on collaborative work with Andreas Genoni (GERPS, BiB), Heiko Rüger (BiB) and Andreas Ette (GERPS, BiB).

22.07.2023 | Talk at the annual SASE conference in Rio

Lisa Mansfeld (University of Duisburg-Essen) presented her paper on correlations between family characteristics and short-term economic outcomes of emigrants at the annual conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE).

She engaged in discussions with international scholars and got valuable feedback for her doctoral project.

07.07.2023 | Turning Gold: International conference on the occasion of BiB’s 50th anniversary

The conference hosted two talks by fellow team members: Lisa Mansfeld talked about correlations between family characteristics and short-term economic outcomes of emigration, and Andreas Genoni presented collaborative work on shifts in subjective well-being in the course of international migration.

You can download the scientific poster here.

15.06.2023 | Scientific talk: The role of family for economic outcomes of emigrants

At the 11th conference of the European Society on Family Relations (ESFR) at Roskilde University, Denmark, Lisa Mansfeld talked about correlations between family characteristics and short-term economic outcomes of emigrants.

Results show a lower probability of employment for respondents living with their spouse, and that having children is associated with a lower employment probability for women. Interestingly, there are opposing changes in perceived income and living standard for men and women.

24.05.2023 | New publication: Who blames Brexit for their decision to leave the UK?

This new article investigates migration motives of return migrants from the UK after the Brexit referendum.

More than half of German migrants from the UK assert that their decision to return was strongly affected by Brexit. Furthermore, Brexit as a motive for returning positively correlates to dissatisfaction with the political situation, the lack of social security, and dissatisfaction with life in the country as other reasons for their return.

The article, authored by Nico Stawarz (BiB) and Nils Witte (GERPS, BiB), has been published in European Societies.

20.03.2023 | Career start abroad: The implications of graduate migration for social inequality

This new article investigates international school-to-work transitions (SWTs) of higher education graduates.

It finds that graduates from advantaged social origin are more likely to start their career abroad than graduates from disadvantaged origin. Surprisingly, the wage benefit of international SWTs compared with national SWTs is higher among graduates from disadvantaged origins.

The article authored by Nils Witte (GERPS, BiB), Nico Stawarz (BiB), and Nicolai Netz (DZHW) has been published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.

30.01.2023 | New publication: international migration and partnership stability

In this publication, our colleague Lisa Mansfeld finds that migration increases the risk of union dissolution.

Interestingly, the risk of union dissolution is higher for remigrants compared to emigrants. Furthermore, the underlying reasons of migration play a role in explaining partnership stability.

The findings have been published in Population, Space and Place and can be found here .

13.12.2022 | New experimental study on how communicating participation deadlines affects survey participation

Together with Andreas Heinz (International University of Applied Science), Jean Philippe Décieux explored in a survey experiment whether communicating an extended deadline for survey participation influences actual participation in the survey.

They find that overall response speed was significantly higher after communicating an extended participation deadline, but overall response rate was slightly lower compared to scenarios without deadline extension.

The authors advise to communicate participation deadlines and to refrain from extending them unless there are specific reasons to do so. For a closer read, you can find their article in the International Journal of Social Research Methodology .

17.08.2022 | Discussing GERPS-based research at the 117th ASA conference in L.A. and at Duke University

This year’s annual conference of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in Los Angeles featured a talk from Andreas Genoni, in which he discussed how cultural differences affect recent migrants’ adjustment to their destination. Subsequently, he also engaged in discussions about his collaborative research project at Duke University. There, he gave an invited talk at a mini-conference, hosted by Stephen Vaisey and his Worldview Lab.

07.07.2022 | Documentation of the Third Wave of GERPS

This documentation presents the methods and data of the third wave of the panel. It covers about 5,800 German emigrants and returnees. The study applies a multidestination country design and enables the comparative analysis of migrants and persons who remained in their country of origin.

The aim of the project is to investigate the individual consequences of international migration for the life course of mobile individuals from economically highly developed countries. In the third wave, the thematic focus was on respondents’ partner and fertility biography and on their social relations. In addition, the panel continued to collect information about moves, household situations, employment situations, identificational aspects, and well-being. Detailed information about data collection, methodological aspects (e.g. pretests, weights), and variable definitions is provided in the data documentation of wave 3. The documentation can be found here.

GERPS surveys 20- to 70- year-old internationally mobile persons with German citizenship. Over 11,000 persons – roughly 4,600 emigrants and 6,400 return migrants – participated in the first wave. About 5,800 persons completed the third wave questionnaire.

The Scientific Use File (SUF) of waves 1-3 is now available in the GESIS data archive.

More News from the GERPS Project

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The project is carried out in close cooperation between the Federal Institute for Population Research and the Universität Duisburg-Essen.

GERPS is funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG).