A Study of Employment Careers of Immigrants in Germany

This study examines immigrants’ employment careers and their (dis)similarity with the standard career sequence of native Germans. Applying the sequence analysis techniques, the study shows that career patterns of ethnic Germans and EU immigrants are closer to the employment patterns of the nativeborn than it is the case for other immigrant groups. Career paths of guest workers from Turkey remain however extremely dissimilar even when differences in the age structure and the educational level are taken into account. Long and frequent unemployment seems to be behind this dissimilarity. Immigrants, and particularly Turks, not only have higher propensity to be unemployed, they are also pushed to the unskilled occupations. The second generation, although displaying the closest degree of similarity to the employment career patterns of native-born Germans, largely fail when it comes to occupational assimilation, even though they seem to escape labour market segmentation, pronounced among their parents, often entering occupations in which first-generation unprivileged immigrants are barely found.