New Chinese Migration to Germany: Historical Consistencies and New Patterns of Diversification within a Globalized Migration Regime

Chinese migration to Germany is not very well documented, even though sojourners arrived in this country as early as the first half of the eighteenth century. There is some research on particular issues in specific historical contexts, such as the discrimination and persecution during the Third Reich (Yü‐Dembski, 1996, 1997), Chinese students in Germany between 1860 and 1945 (Harnisch, 1999), Chinese‐German mixed marriages (Groeling‐Che, 1991), and irregular immigration and human trafficking during the 1980s and 1990s (Giese, 1999a). Yet, no systematic research on the history of Chinese migration or continuous analysis of more recent migration trends and related political issues has been carried out so far. Some of the reasons for this include: Chinese communities have always formed only a small minority among the non‐German population; after World War II, Chinese communities were dispersed over the whole of (West) Germany and they have not created any visible “Chinatown” yet; and, until very recently, there seemed to be virtually no political or social problems related to Chinese migrants, and the few emerging political issues still appear insignificant compared to those related to other ethnic groups. As a result, Chinese immigration and the lives of Chinese migrants — widely ignored as a potential research topic for Modern China Studies in Germany — have not yet received attention from scholars of social sciences. This article will attempt to offer a comprehensive summary of the history of new Chinese migration to Germany from the early 1970s to the end of the second millennium. Mainly based on official statistics, it will then discuss recent trends in Chinese immigration for different groups of migrants since the 1990s, focusing on policy‐related issues and political implications of these recent and potential future developments.     

Does the availability of child care influence the employment of mothers? Findings from western Germany

There is a vast empirical literature investigating the effects of child care costson female employment. Day-care costs are usually treated as a reduction infemale wages and are supposed to reduce a woman's propensity to participatein the labor market. In this paper we argue that an analysis of the effects ofchild care on the employment of mothers in Germany should focus on theavailability rather than the affordability of care, due to peculiarities of theGerman day-care regime. Our empirical findings cast doubt on the effectivenessof the current German day-care regime. Specifically, we question the extent towhich it enables mothers to participate in the labor market.     

The Differential Influence of Women's Residential District on the Risk of Entering First Marriage and Motherhood in Western Germany

This paper investigates the role of women's residential district in the process of family formation in western Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. Our analysis of the transition to first marriage and motherhood is based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), which we merge with a rich set of district-level data. The estimated multilevel discrete-time logit models suggest that (1) basically all regional heterogeneity in women's entry into parenthood is due to differences in the respondents' marital status, while there is (2) a constant and significant regional variation in women's first marriage probabilities, which cannot be explained by population composition or by structural contextual effects. Thus, regional influences on fertility behavior do not have an autonomous quality, but are merely mediated through a latent contextual effect on women's risk of entering first marriage, which we attribute to regional socio-cultural milieus.     

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Improving Participation in Green Infrastructure Planning

Green infrastructure is a strategic planning concept that is able to address environmental, social and even economic problems by supplying a variety of benefits for society. Especially in times of public financial crises and spatial transformation, it is important to ensure that those services are high quality to guarantee that they will provide the intended benefits by integrating stakeholders’ knowledge and experience into green infrastructure planning. Active stakeholder participation leads to legitimate and informed future planning that accounts for society’s needs. This paper investigates participation approaches of six green infrastructure investments in Belgium, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. The major aim is to explore how and when participation should take place to optimize participation in green infrastructure planning. This is achieved by surveying the stakeholders involved and conducting stakeholder discussions to identify their views on the participation approaches employed and their integration into the planning process. We found that stakeholders were generally satisfied with how they were involved but desired a broader and more tailored mix of approaches. Furthermore, we found several Arnstein gaps, which lead us to conclude by suggesting recommendations that are helpful for successful participation in green infrastructure planning.