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By analysing the childcaring experiences of female skilled workers from South Korea (hereafter, Korea) in Germany, this paper maintains that the challenges in labour market participation for highly skilled women, and especially those with children, should be understood in the context of their encounters with similar and different care and employment regimes between their home and host countries. On the theoretical level, this research confirms the argument that the migration of highly skilled workers should be contextualized not from a neoclassical perspective in which the maximization of economic profits takes priority, but from an institutional point of view in which social and cultural norms, practices, and policies in both the home and host societies are taken into consideration. Specifically, through a series of in-depth interviews conducted with skilled female migrants from Korea, this paper highlights the significance of taking the function of similar and different caring and employment regimes into account in explaining the challenges faced by highly skilled migrant women in labour market participation. On the empirical level, this paper sheds light on the migration experiences of skilled women from Asia as well as the (dis)integration processes of newcomers from third-national countries in Germany, with a focus on female migrants from Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germany's new immigration law, which took effect in 2005, was hotly debated over a period of four years. This paper follows the debate on the law through the newsprint media, examines the representation of immigration as an economic utility, and investigates the contents of this economic-utility perspective of immigration in light of neoliberal restructuring in Germany. The analysis focuses on 609 articles sampled from five major German daily newspapers published between July 2001 and August 2005. A discourse analysis suggests that the newsprint media represented immigration on the one hand as an economic necessity to replenish the labor market and ensure the international competitiveness of key industrial sectors. On the other hand, immigration was depicted as an economic liability that raises unemployment rates and burdens the public welfare system. Although the media emphasized the economic necessity of immigration, the final law does not permit any significant immigration of labor. The paper resolves this contradiction by situating media discourse in a wider context of neoliberal reforms and European Union expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze the welfare use of Turkish immigrants and natives in Germany. The authors ask whether the immigrant-native gap in welfare use can be explained by observable characteristics, whether the mechanisms behind welfare dependence differ for Turkish immigrants and natives, and, finally, they compare the situation before and after the 2005 reform of the German welfare system. Design/methodology/approach – Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, the authors estimate linear probability models with random effects to investigate the correlates of transfer receipt for Turkish immigrants and natives. Findings – Turkish immigrants have a higher propensity to use welfare benefits than natives. After controlling for general individual and household level characteristics, the difference in welfare receipt is statistically significant only for the group of second generation immigrants. The correlation of observable characteristics with welfare dependence differs significantly for the native and immigrant sample. The share of benefit recipients increased after the policy reform in 2005 for both immigrants and natives. Practical implications – First, as human capital and particularly labor market status are important determinants of welfare use, training programs designed for the special needs of immigrants might support their labor market integration. Second, measures to ameliorate the integration of older people into the labor market might be particularly useful because the need for welfare benefits arises particularly at the 50-60 age range. Originality/value – This is the first study to investigate welfare use of Turkish immigrants after the German 2005 labor market policy reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]