Research Design

To examine the three objectives in detail, in the framework of the TransFAR project a quantitative survey was developed and carried out.

• The questionnaire covers information on the whereabouts of different family members (partner, children, parents (in-law), and siblings) as well as their living conditions further extra-familial social contacts are also collected by recording egocentric personal social networks. For this, three name generators are employed addressing different dimensions of social contacts. In order to find out how exactly these networks look like in terms of their family/non-family and ethnic composition and which type of resources can be accessed through the network, several follow-up questions are asked. Furthermore, in addition to basic socio-demographic characteristics the questionnaire covers topics such as the reasons and the decision to flee as well as the migration practices of the families and the satisfaction with different areas of life in Germany. To account for the pandemic situation and connected restrictions in 2020, some questions have been amended indicating that they refer to the situation before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a few additional questions were added with reference to the pandemic.
• The TransFAR survey is carried out among Eritrean and Syrian women and men, who entered Germany between 2013 and 2019 at the age of at least 18, and who were 45 years old or younger at the time of sampling. Refugees from both countries of origin differ significantly with regard to their reasons for leaving their country of origin, their migration routes as well as their cultural background. At the same time, the prospects to remain in Germany for refugees from these two countries are very good, so that the development of transnational family arrangements and their interactions with social life in Germany will continue to be of great relevance in the long run.
• A random sample was drawn from the Central Register of Foreigners (Ausländerzentralregister, AZR). The sample is stratified by nationality and gender and, takes into account the distribution of the target population across the federal states and community size categories.