National and Ethnic Identity Formation in German Immigrant Youth

Max Reason , University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The integration of migrants and their families into the German mainstream has been an issue for the country since the first labor migrants began settling permanently in the 1960’s. Today, migrants and their offspring represent a large portion of the German population, and more work is needed in order to understanding how these ethnic minorities form both national and ethnic identities in this multi-cultural context. Additionally, this works requires an understanding of how macro-, meso-, and micro-level determinants of identity lead to heterogeneous identity development between national origin groups. Using a nationally representative longitudinal sample of adolescents, this dissertation will use the panel-data methods of random effects models and latent growth curve models to investigate the factors that determine identity formation among ethnic minority youth in Germany and how these identities change over the “demographically dense” period of the early life-course within and between these groups.

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 Presented in Session 2. Children & Youth