“The results of our study point towards discrimination of migrant kids in connection with the acquisition of the German language and school drop-out rates for children whose parents live in ethnic enclaves. Thus, our research, which mainly focuses on children from educationally disadvantaged immigrant backgrounds, puts results of earlier studies involving a higher level of education among immigrants into a different perspective”, says Prof. Dr. Alexander Danzer (KU). He went on to say that ghettoization must be avoided in order to achieve a successful integration of children with migrant background in the long term.
A major cause for the negative impact of ethnic concentration on the children’s acquisition of language was their parents’ poor command of German. In contrast, economic conditions or a lack of contact with locals did not influence the effect of enclaves on children.
The current debate on the importance of regional distribution for the integration of refugees needs to take two main factors into account: On the one hand it emphasizes that settling in centers can enable the formation of own networks for the respective countries of origin, which is said to facilitate entry into the labor market. New findings, however, suggest that this leads to a ghettoization which has a detrimental effect on language acquisition and integration.
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