Crossing Social Boundaries in an Immigration Context: Exogamy and Gendered Employment Patterns in Unions in Germany

Mirko K Braack,Heike Trappe,Nadja Milewski

doi:10.1007/s12147-021-09281-8

Abstract

We study gendered employment patterns in unions by focusing on the role of exogamy for non-migrants in Germany. Classical assimilation theory has studied such mixed migrant-non-migrant unions mainly with a focus on the members of ethnic minorities. However, this perspective neglects the question of the social consequences of exogamy for the members of the majority group. We aim to fill this knowledge gap by investigating the association of being in a mixed union and the employment patterns of the couple. Our theoretical considerations and working hypotheses are derived from modernization theories, welfare state and labor market theories, gender studies, and social boundary-crossing frameworks. Drawing on the scientific use file of the German Microcensus of 2013, our sample consists of 44,499 non-migrant men (about 7% of whom are in a mixed union with a migrant) and 43,722 non-migrant women (about 5% of whom are in a mixed union). We estimate multinomial logistic regression models. We conclude that the persistent disadvantage for immigrants on the labor market in Germany shapes the gendered employment patterns of their unions, which, in turn, affect the members of the majority population. For non-migrant men, exogamy is associated with a re-traditionalization of employment patterns, whereby a man is more likely to be the main earner if he is in an exogamous union than if he is in an endogamous union. For non-migrant women, by contrast, we find evidence of a role reversal in exogamous unions, whereby the woman is more likely to be the main earner.

Highlights

Gender Roles, Migration, and Mixed UnionsMany researchers and politicians perceive gender equality as one—if not the— dividing line between the post-industrial countries on the one hand, and the industrial and agrarian countries on the other [51]
The results indicate that compared to their counterparts in endogamous unions, non-migrants in a union with a non-European partner are slightly less likely to follow the dual-earner or the one-and-a-half-earner model
We find in Model 1 (Table 3A) that compared to their counterparts in endogamous unions, non-migrant women in both types of exogamous unions are as likely to be in a male breadwinner arrangement and are significantly less likely to be in a dual-earner arrangement

Summary

Introduction

Gender Roles, Migration, and Mixed UnionsMany researchers and politicians perceive gender equality as one—if not the— dividing line between the post-industrial countries on the one hand, and the industrial and agrarian countries on the other [51]. By dichotomizing migrants and majority populations into a “traditional/gender-inequality” group and a “modern/ gender-equal” group, issues of gender equality reproduce and contribute to stereotypes, xenophobia, and femonationalism by ignoring the heterogeneity within mainstream populations, and stigmatizing non-European migrants [29]. Previous research on gender-role behavior has mainly investigated the gendered employment patterns of the majority populations and of immigrants, or, more generally, of ethnic minorities separately. Our study focuses on a group of people who have crossed the social boundaries between immigrant minorities and members of the majority group in the most intimate of life domains: i.e., exogamous couples [7]. Mixed unions between an immigrant and a non-migrant provide a “microlaboratory of intercultural relations” [90: p. The aim of our study is to compare the gendered employment patterns of exogamous unions with the patterns of non-migrant endogamous unions in Germany. We are interested in the question what role exogamy plays for the majority population

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