Abstract

The goal of this project is to uncover factors explaining intra-household decision making over children and housework in the population of refugees in Germany. Germany faced a large influx of refugees in the last three years with the refugee population that contains a large number of families, with women and children. Most of the refugees flee from countries that are characterized my more traditional family roles although the refugee population contains different subgroups, some of which do not differ in values and attitudes towards women with respect to native population (see Brucker et al. 2019). Refugees often flee in groups: according to the IAB-BAMF-SOEP survey of refugees (IAB, 2019), between 2013 and 2016, around 47 percent of refugees came with family, and around 9 percent came with friends. Therefore, kinship and friends may form a basis for socialization for many refugees, especially in the early period of their stay. The project ‘Intra-household decision making over children and housework in the population of refugees in Germany’ has two objectives. First of all, it aims to investigate the role of state financial support and state benefits for refugee women in affecting the decision making in the households. In other words, it asks whether policies empowering female refugees by offering them direct financial help could be beneficial for their say in the decision making and their well-being. Second, it looks at the association between the characteristics of male and female kinship and immediate networks of friends and family, and intra-household dynamics in the households of refugees. Given the relevance of the meso-level for various family outcomes, investigating its importance in household bargaining processes for the population of German refugees, who might extensively rely on family networks, is a fruitful area for investigation.