HAL_F_01 Regional Panel: Migration and Cohesion

Objectives/ Research Questions

This project aims to systematically investigate the relationship between (international, national, and inner-city) migration processes and social cohesion in local societies. It is a central project of the Halle section because it measures and analyses regional differences in social cohesion. Thus, it also contributes to the analysis of spatial inequalities within the framework of Cluster 2 because it examines central lines of tension between East and West Germany and the degree of peripheralization.

The project’s central survey instrument is a quantitative regional panel, which, in close cooperation with 12 municipalities, uses a survey with a mixed methods research design to investigate processes of the connection between social spaces and cohesion. The panel works with a high number of cases to be able to reconstruct differentiations at the neighbourhood level precisely. The regional panel is a cooperative project with the Bielefeld, Göttingen, and Hannover sections, with the Halle section coordinating the surveys. The project HAL_F_01 conducts these surveys in East German municipalities. The regional panel uses a mixed methods design in the form of a combination of internet surveys and postal surveys. In the project, expert interviews are also conducted on the municipal practice of reimbursing the “costs of housing” in the survey municipalities of the regional panel.

Thematic Reference to Social Cohesion

In contemporary societies, society consists of a multilevel system, which sociospatially comprises a world society, national societies, and local societies. The latter is the focus of this project since it is at the level of local societies that a large part of the interaction contexts of social capital and the interaction of intermediary organizations are constituted and reproduced. These micro-dynamics of interaction are substantially codetermined by macro-structural positioning in world societal migration systems.

In our view, it would therefore be useful to examine more closely the causal and selective effects of migration on feelings of relative deprivation, which can be seen as the main reasons for the weakening of social cohesion or the development of destructive forms of cohesion. For example, it should be examined whether the increasing feelings of relative deprivation in East Germany (similar to those in European Union accession countries) can also explain positions in migration systems. Moreover, where gaps in the social network were torn by emigration or symbolic grievances were experienced through vacancies and fears of loss of control also broke out through heterogeneous immigration.

The project aims to reconstruct the connections between migration and cohesion as precisely as possible and capture useful counter-forces of compensation or the generation of cohesion in migration processes. With this basic knowledge, concepts for dealing with cohesion problems in spatially mobile societies can be developed in the medium term.