Marital Assimilation and the Economic Well-Being of Immigrants in Germany, UK and the US

Despite very different historical legacies, migration is now an important issue in Europe as well as the United States.  New waves of European migrants and asylum-seekers make the presumption of ethnic homogeneity obsolete, and pose new challenges for nation-states trying to balance sovereignty and national identities with the demands of economic and political integration into the European Union.  A burgeoning literature in the social sciences addresses the prospects for economic, social and political incorporation of these new arrivals, and the implications of global migration for social change (cf. Alba and Nee 2003; Alba, Sloan, and Sperling 2011; Bloemraad 2006; Geddes 2003; Heath, Rothon, and Kilpi 2008; Hochschild and Mollenkopf 2009; Joppke 2010; Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, Waters, and Holdaway 2008; Koopmans, Statham, Giugni, and Passy 2005; Le 2007; Massey 1981; Portes and Rumbaut 1996; Smith and Edmonston 1997; Voas and Fleischmann 2011; Waters and Alba 2010; Waters and Jiménez 2005). This paper contributes to the growing literature on the economic integration of immigrants via a comparison of marital assimilation and its relationship to the economic integration of first and second generation immigrants in Germany, the U.K, and the US.