Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Migration und Sozialstaat

Topics and Work Packages

The research project contains four different topic areas which correspond to the four work packages: (1) Fiscal Effects of Migration, (2) Migration Models, (3) Acceptance of Migration and (4) Institutional Adaptability.

The research project seeks to answer the following questions:

  1. What effects does migration have on the fiscal balance of the welfare state, under various assumptions about the scope and structure of migration and welfare state regulations? To answer this question, existing theoretical foundations will be further developed and new data sets such as the IAB-SOEP migration sample and the IAB-BAMF-SOEP survey of refugees will be used. Gender aspects are given special consideration.
  2. How do different welfare state regulations affect the scope and structure of migration? This question will be answered with a new generation of gravitational models that consider network effects.
  3. What are the consequences of the contributions of migrants to the fiscal balance of the welfare state and welfare transfers to immigrants for the acceptance and legitimacy of migration? To answer this question not only socio-scientific and political-economic models, but also new behavior-theoretical approaches will be used.
  4. How adaptable are different welfare states and migration regimes in terms of migration? In order to investigate this question, performance and incentive systems should be compared internationally and integration analyzed taking into account social capital effects.

The project is interdisciplinary and combines approaches from the fields of public finance, comparative social state research, empirical migration research, and behavioral approaches. Gender aspects are given special consideration.