Federal Institute for Population Research

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Einsame junge Frau steht auf Seebrücke und schaut in die Ferne (refer to: Loneliness: Especially younger people are feeling increasingly lonely) | Source: © fotoduets/stock.adobe.com

FReDA Policy BriefLoneliness: Especially younger people are feeling increasingly lonely

In the last five years, the feeling of loneliness has increased in Germany. Today, one in three people between the ages of 18 and 53 feels lonely at least some of the time – including many younger people under 30, as new BiB analyses show.

Miscellaneous PublicationsWhen expectations backfire: Unmet migration expectations and changes in the destination attachment of recent immigrants to Switzerland

Genoni, Andreas; Ruedin, Didier (2024)

SocArXiv

DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/srwbg

When people move abroad, it is surprisingly immigrants with higher levels of education who tend to report more discrimination and a weaker attachment to their destination country than immigrants with lower levels of education. This so-called integration paradox is only partially understood. Here, we examine how unmet expectations of immigrants about their life abroad account for educational differences in destination attachment. We use panel data on recent im-migrants to Switzerland from the Swiss Migration-Mobility Survey (N=5,242 immigrants and 13,890 observations, 2016-2022) to capture the extent of unmet expectations and associated disappointment through a question on dissatisfaction with the decision to migrate. Consistent with theory, we find that increasingly negative evaluations of pre-migration expectations are associated with reduced destination attachment, especially for immigrants with higher educa-tion. We conclude that qualifications and economic success alone are not sufficient to fully un-derstand immigrant integration, and call for a broader set of integration indicators.

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