Marriage models in legal migrants' communities in modern Germany

The necessity to study marital behavior of migrants in the FRG is made actual by stepped-up media information about risk of reducing of ethnic Germen because of the increasing flow of foreigners and increasing of their birth rate. The study subject is legal migrants because there are data about population, age and gender and national composition of this group in official German statistics. Named information is presented in the base of the Federal Statistical Administration. Also the source base of the study includes materials of the statistical office of the European Union (Eurostat), the Economic Commission for Europe, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. To prove or disprove the thesis about the threat of dominating of foreign ethnic population over the indigenous one in Germany the authors analyze national composition of legal migrants, their marital behavior expressed in marriage age and also birth rate. Statistical data demonstrate that the largest amount of officially registered migrants comes from EU countries and Eastern Europe ones. Attitude to marriage in those countries is similar to the German's one. The inhabitants of the south and east of Europe almost coincide in marital age. For men it is about 32, for women it is 30. While in the FRG in 2017 male population get married for the first time in 34,2, and female population get married for the first time in 31,7. Coming from the Eastern Europe region migrants position their social adaptation, education and career as the main tasks. Creating a family and having a baby are not a priority. Representatives of this migrants group demonstrate rather low birth rate. It is not high in their home countries, too. Turkish migrants are one of the largest and the longest living in the FRG territory groups of non-native population. Among them there are descendants of labor migrants and also Turks who came to Germany in childhood and adolescence and whose marital behavior was partly developed in conditions of new social, ethnic, cultural and religious surroundings. The second ones demonstrate different models of marriage behavior. Largely it is determined by social adaptation of citizens and their education level. Turks with higher education more often show high age of getting married for the first time and low birth level. Representatives of this group often get married with German. Having lower educational level and poorly adapted migrants predominantly create families with representatives of their people and demonstrate higher birth rate. In this case average birth rate reaches only the threshold of simple reproduction. Incomers from the Northern Africa considered by the example of migrants from Tunisia and Marocco are predominantly characterized by gravitating to increasing of marriage age and forming of birth rate at the level of average reproduction. So we can conclude that birth rate in the community of officially registered foreigners living in the FRG territory does not threaten the German population. Priorities of legal migrants are education and professional self-realization overshadowing the reproductive function.

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