Residential Segregation of Refugees in Germany. Comparing Ukrainians and Earlier Refugee Groups in German Cities

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 17. Refugee resettlement

Abstract

Since the 2022 Russian invasion, over one million Ukrainians have sought refuge in Germany. Unlike earlier refugee cohorts, many Ukrainians entered under different legal regimes with faster access to social security and different placement procedures, creating a unique opportunity to compare intra urban settlement dynamics across cohorts. Research on refugee settlement patterns shows that newcomers frequently concentrate in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods, which further shapes everyday access to jobs or schools and thereby influences long term integration outcomes.
Therefore, this study asks whether Ukrainian arrivals (2022–2024) and earlier refugee groups (2013–2018) concentrate in socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods, which mechanisms explain a possible concentration, and whether these mechanisms differ by cohort. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of the Chicago school of urban studies, we test two mechanisms: co-ethnic path dependence and low-cost housing availability.
We use comprehensive data from the Federal Employment Agency covering all German cities with more than 90,000 inhabitants. Shares of Ukrainians, the earlier refugee cohort, and contextual covariates are aggregated to 1×1 km grid cells. We estimate OLS regressions with city fixed effects to identify within city associations and pooled models with cohort interactions to test whether mechanisms operate differently across cohorts.
Results indicate that both cohorts concentrate in socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods, but the association is substantially stronger for the earlier refugee cohort than for Ukrainians, suggesting that less restrictive legal regimes reduce residence in the most deprived areas. We find no support for co ethnic path dependence as an explanation for the observed settlement patterns. Housing market indicators partially account for concentration for both cohorts, yet a substantial portion of why refugees reside in disadvantaged neighborhoods remain unexplained.

Author

• Sarah George, Leibniz-Institut for educational trajectories