Data

A total of 1.458 interviews were conducted, half with women and half with men. 50 per cent of the interviewees were from Eritrea, 50 per cent from Syria. Respondents from Syria are on average a few years older than respondents from Eritrea.

Basic demographic, socioeconomic, and migration-related characteristics of respondents of the TransFAR survey (by country of origin and sex)

While around 40 per cent of Eritrean respondents belong to the over-30 age group, this is the case for around 60 per cent of respondents from Syria. Respondents were also asked about their current marital status. The majority of respondents are in a relationship, although this proportion is significantly higher among women from both countries of origin (86 per cent) than among men (57 per cent). A comparison of countries of origin shows that Syrian respondents of both sexes have a partner more often than Eritrean participants. It is also striking that only just under 7 per cent of Syrian women are single. Furthermore, Syrian migrants have almost twice as many children (mean number of children: 1.7) as Eritrean migrants (0.9), with men from both countries of origin having fewer children than women. Both biological and stepchildren as well as adopted children were taken into account here.

The questionnaire also contains a large number of items to measure the socioeconomic status of the respondents. The highest educational degree of respondents from Syria is higher on average than that of those from Eritrea. It is noticeable that a large proportion of Eritrean respondents do not have a degree, meaning that they either did not attend school or did not complete it. The proportion of individuals with a university entrance qualification or college or university degree is also much higher among Syrian respondents than among those from Eritrea. For both Eritrean and Syrian respondents, the majority acquired their school, university or vocational school qualifications in their respective countries of origin.

With regard to employment status, more than half of the men were employed at the time of the interview, namely 50 per cent of the Syrians and almost 61 per cent of the Eritreans. In contrast, the majority of women place themselves in the "housewife" category, with 61 per cent of Syrians and 51 of Eritreans. The proportion of persons who are doing an internship or training or attending an “integration course” is relatively balanced among women and men from both contexts of origin; around 20 per cent state this as their most important activity at present.

Looking at the duration of migration, about half of the Syrian respondents have a maximum of three months between leaving Syria and arriving in Germany, whereas this applies to less than 7 per cent of those from Eritrea. The majority of respondents left their country of origin between 2013 and 2015, although this proportion is larger among respondents from Syria (65 per cent) than among those from Eritrea (58 per cent). In contrast, just under one-third of those from Eritrea had already left their home country in the years prior to 2013.

At the time of the survey, respondents had lived in Germany for an average of between 4 and 5 years (a minimum of 1 year and a maximum of 7 years, which is due to sampling procedure as described above).

Respondents from Eritrea are more likely to live alone in their household in Germany compared to Syrian respondents, with male respondents from both countries of origin living in a single-person household more often than women, which is mainly due to differences in marital status.