Hasil untuk "City population. Including children in cities, immigration"

Jules Lepoutre, Camille de Vulpillières

Abstract This article examines the recent restrictive shift in ius soli in France and the United States, focusing on the 2025 reforms enacted in the French island of Mayotte and through President Trump’s executive order. While officially framed as neutral policy responses to migratory pressures, we argue that these measures rely on the instrumentalisation of the so-called “magnet affect” of ius soli – a claim with a weak empirical basis that has been mobilised to legitimise restrictive changes in citizenship law. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, we show that reformers’ alleged link between ius soli and irregular migration rests on evasive or diluted evidence rather than credible premises or causal account. By reframing ius soli as a conditional privilege instead of an automatic right, we find that both states reaffirm a sovereign logic of exclusion, reversing its historical role as a mechanism of inclusion. This study contributes to wider debates on the tightening of membership criteria in contemporary democracies and the performative function of political rhetoric in shaping legal frameworks.

Izabela Grabowska, Christina Hansen, Agata Jastrzebowska et al.

Abstract This article examines the complexities of integrating young adult migrants from non-EU countries into European contexts, advocating for a shift toward inclusive, locally informed, and reciprocal integration processes. It critiques state-centric, assimilationist frameworks that emphasize an imagined national identity and Western norms of youth transitions, neglecting local nuances and diverse migrant experiences. Through findings from a European Delphi study engaging 114 stakeholders from seven European countries, including migrant youth organisations, also represented by stakeholders with a migration background, the study highlights the need for a dynamic, process-oriented approach to integration. This approach prioritizes mutual adjustments between migrants and host communities, emphasizing flexibility, responsiveness, and local relevance. The study underscores the role of local actors and contexts in shaping integration policies, contrasting inclusivity at the local level with exclusionary national frameworks. Stakeholders emphasized the harmful impact of state-imposed policies and the importance of youth groups and migrant organizations as active contributors to policy development. The research proposes tailored solutions to address vulnerabilities and calls for long-term, multi-level governance that values the lived experiences of young migrants. Utilizing a two-stage Delphi methodology, the study facilitated anonymous stakeholder dialogue across seven European countries, yielding consensus on key integration challenges and innovative policy recommendations. By integrating diverse perspectives and recognizing young migrants as co-creators of their futures, this article advances debates on migration and integration, advocating for policies that are equitable, inclusive, and grounded in local realities.

Ezgi Tuncer

Abstract This article seeks to position Istanbul through the practices of everyday life of middle-class, skilled migrants from both the Global North and South and their perceptions of urban safety and precarity. It examines individuals’ processes of migration to Turkey, revealing their initial impressions of Istanbul as a safe city of opportunities, and then analyses their everyday urban lives, highlighting hidden forms of precarity and discrimination. Through in-depth interviews with 45 women and 34 men—more than half of whom are North American and European—and participant observation in people’s living environments and at various social events, I argue that Istanbul, while perceived as a ‘safe haven’ at first, becomes a ‘zone of precarity’ where most of the participants have experienced intersectional forms of precarity, latent patterns of discrimination, and insecurities that belie the common perception that skilled migrants are privileged. To substantiate this argument, this ethno-spatial study presents an analysis of qualitative data as well as an online subjective mapping of Istanbul, where perceptions of urban safety and spatial precarity are displayed through socio-spatial experiences encountered in neighbourhoods, workplaces, and public spaces.

Sebastian Poledna, Nikita Strelkovskii, Alessandra Conte et al.

Abstract This study examines the potential economic and labour market impacts of a hypothetical but plausible migration scenario of 250,000 new migrants inspired by Austria’s experience in 2015. Using the agent-based macroeconomic model developed by Poledna et al. (Eur Econ Rev, 151:104306, 2023. 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2022.104306, the study explores the detailed labour market outcomes for different groups in Austria’s population and the macroeconomic effects of the migration scenario. The analysis suggests that Austria’s economy and labour market have the potential to be resilient to the simulated migration influx. The results indicate a positive impact on GDP due to increased aggregate consumption and investment. The labour market experiences an increase in the unemployment rates of natives and previous migrants. In some industries, the increase in the unemployment rates is more significant, potentially indicating competition among different groups of migrants. This research provides insights for policymakers and stakeholders in Austria and other countries that may face the challenge of managing large-scale migration in the near future.

Marie-Caroline Compans, Eva Beaujouan, Cristina Suero García

As first births are increasingly postponed across Europe, a strong two-child family norm persists. Past research has examined educational differentials in progressions to second birth, testing various hypotheses but overlooking normative aspects. Comparing fertility surveys from France and Spain, we explore whether late first-time mothers, who have fewer reproductive biological years left to conceive, accelerate the transition to a subsequent child (time squeeze effect). We also consider a normative dimension, i.e., whether women have their first child earlier or later than others in their educational and cohort groups. In both countries, among first-time mothers between 25 and 34 years of age, highly-educated women transitioned to second birth more frequently than less-educated women did. Within the same age group, highly-educated women in Spain had a second child more quickly after the firstborn than their less educated counterparts did, while there is no such difference in France. These results hold after controlling for cohort effects, but are only partly explained by a time squeeze effect. Different normative ages at first birth by education and birth cohort explain the educational gap in the likelihood of transitioning to second birth, but not the birth intervals in Spain. In sum, our analysis demonstrates a persistent educational gap in second births in this country that cannot be reduced to biological or normative effects. This suggests that a broad range of economic constraints play a role, such as unfavourable individual economic conditions and lower levels of institutional support for parenthood.

Evan Easton-Calabria, Andreas Hackl

The current scale and duration of displacement prompts renewed urgency about livelihoods prospects for displaced people and the role of humanitarian organisations in fostering them. This special issue focuses on how aid organisations, together with the private sector and other actors, have worked to include refugees in new forms of online work within the web-based digital economy. Building on comparative analysis and a comprehensive review of the field of digital livelihoods among the forcibly displaced, in this introductory article we argue that including refugees in this digital economy is currently neither a sustainable form of humanitarian relief nor is it a development solution that provides large-scale decent work. We show how digital livelihoods approaches have gained a special footing in the middle ground between short-term economic relief and long-term development. Indeed, digital economies seemingly offer a variety of ‘quick-fix’ solutions at the transition from humanitarian emergency towards long-term development efforts. While digital economies harbour significant potential, this cannot be fully realised unless current efforts to include refugees in digital economies are complemented by efforts to address digital divides, uphold refugees’ rights, and ensure more decent working conditions.

Brendan T. Lawson

Over the past 25 years, the humanitarian sector has become increasingly dominated by numbers. This has been reflected in the growth of academic work that explores this relationship between humanitarianism and quantification. The most recent contribution to this literature is Joël Glasman’s Humanitarianism and the Quantification of Humanitarian Needs. Through his empirical and theoretical contributions, Glasman draws our attention to the different ways that academics approach this topic. These four strands structure the literature review: knowledge – the technical difficulties in quantifying phenomena; governance – how numbers help humanitarian organisations manage the sector; effects – the impact that quantification has had on the sector as a whole; meaning – the importance of rhetoric, discourse, representation and communication when it comes to understanding the quantitative. As part of the review, the essay also identifies how academics can better engage with each of the four strands.

Milena Chimienti, Eduardo Guichard, Claudio Bolzman et al.

Abstract Whilst reflexive migration studies have criticised the use of categories such as ‘nationality’ and ‘second generation’ in quantitative research, several gaps on how to develop such reflexivity remain. In qualitative data, the co-construction of knowledge seems feasible during fieldwork, whereas the deductive process of quantitative research limits such interactions and is more at risk of reproducing a ‘state thought’. Through a longitudinal database, the LIVES-FORS cohort survey of the National Center of Competence in Research LIVES – Overcoming Vulnerability: Life Course Perspectives and FORS – the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Social Sciences (herafter LCS), we engage in this discussion and provide some answers. The LCS is an annual longitudinal survey that, in 2013, started following a cohort of young adults born between 1988 and 1997 who grew up in Switzerland. The underlying hypothesis of the LCS is that migrants’ descendants have access to different resources (and often a lack thereof) to Swiss natives. In this paper, we discuss both the theoretical and empirical challenges to using the categories ‘nationality’ and ‘second generation’. We show the fluidity and subjectivity of these categories. By changing the definition of the category ‘second generation’, we increased the proportion of ‘second-generation’ participants from 43 to almost 62% of the sample. Looking across the five waves of the survey, we notice a 2% unexplained variation in the first nationality mentioned by the participants and 31% missing values regarding the nationality at birth – which are both indicators that nationality is a subjective category as well as a legal one. We illustrate that the static and neutral conceptions of these categories reproduce a false and stigmatised image of migrant descendants. To avoid these pitfalls we suggest developing multilevel geographical comparisons to consider the effects of time (age and historical), to use a wider range of information in order to be more precise, to examine different nationalities instead of focusing on the traditional nationalities of labour immigrants in a given country and to explore the reasons for the lack of answers to certain questions. Thus the questionnaires should include both more flexibility in the possibilities for answers and details and more-open questions regarding sensitive issues about the definition of the self. They should be developed through a participative and bottom-up process fostering mixed methods.

Nathan Levy, Asya Pisarevskaya, Peter Scholten

Abstract It is clear that the field of migration studies has grown significantly over the past decades. What is less known is how this growth has taken place. This article combines bibliometric metadata with expert interviews to analyse the institutionalisation of the field in terms of self-referentiality, internationalisation, and epistemic communities. Self-referentiality in migration studies has gradually increased as the field has grown, until recently. The field has internationalised in terms of international co -authorships but has done so unevenly. Finally, we find that epistemic communities in migration studies, based largely on disciplines, increasingly refer to one another and are increasingly interdisciplinary.

Emanuela Struffolino, Laura Bernardi, Ornella Larenza

Using a mixed-method design, this study explores the heterogeneity in employment trajectories before and after the transition to lone parenthood in Switzerland. First, we perform sequence and cluster analysis on data from the Swiss Household panel to identify typical employment trajectories around the transition to lone parenthood, and then estimate their association with individual and household characteristics (N=462). Finally, we contrast these results with findings from a content analysis of narrative interviews with lone mothers residing in Switzerland (N=38), focusing on values and norms concerning work and care. We identify five employment patterns characterized by either an increase in labor supply (especially for those with more/older children) or by stability in or outside the labor market (for highly educated or younger mothers respectively). The analyses of the interviews provide insights on how employment opportunities and decisions differ by entry mode into lone parenthood, the post-separation relationship with the children’s father, and the ability to mobilize individual, social and institutional resources. The heterogeneity of employment trajectories calls for more attention to within-group differences rather than focusing exclusively on the divide between lone and coupled mothers. By identifying the multiplicity of factors shaping lone mothers’ decisions on their labor market participation, this work feeds into the literature suggesting that effective policies encouraging lone mothers’ labor-market participation should consider: (i) their normative priorities when facing work and care trade-offs, and (ii) the availability of informal and formal support.

Maria Schiller, Christine Lang, Karen Schönwälder et al.

Abstract In both Germany and France, perceptions of immigration, diversity and their societal consequences have undergone important transformations in the past two decades. However, existing research has only partially captured such processes. The “grand narratives” of national approaches, while still influential, no longer explain contemporary realities. Further, analyses of national politics and discourses may not sufficiently reflect the realities across localities and society more broadly. While emerging in different national contexts, little is known about how diversity is actually perceived by political stakeholders at the urban level. Given the key role of immigration and diversity in current conflicts over Europe’s future, it is imperative to assess present-day conceptualisations of migration-related diversity among important societal actors. This article investigates perceptions and evaluations of socio-cultural heterogeneity by important societal actors in large cities. We contribute to existing literature by capturing an unusually broad set of actors from state and civil society. We also present data drawn from an unusually large number of cities. How influential is the perception of current society as heterogeneous, and what forms of heterogeneity are salient? And is socio-cultural and migration-related heterogeneity evaluated as threatening or rather as beneficial? Based on an original data set, this study explores the shared and contested ideas, the cognitive roadmaps of state and non-state actors involved in local politics. We argue that, in both German and French cities, socio-cultural heterogeneity is nowadays widely recognized as marking cities and often positively connoted. At the same time, perceptions of the main features of diversity and of the benefits and challenges attached to it vary. We find commonalities between French and German local actors, but also clear differences. In concluding, we suggest how and why national contexts importantly shape evaluations of diversity.

Rony Brauman

The rehabilitation of international humanitarian law (IHL) has become a priority for those who think that the horrors of contemporary wars are largely due to the blurring of the distinction between civilians and combatants and for those who think that campaigning for the respect of IHL could result in more civilised wars. Similarly, respect for humanitarian principles is still seen by many as the best tool available to protect the safety of aid workers. In this text, I argue that both assumptions are misled. The distinction between civilians and combatants, a cornerstone of IHL, has been blurred in practice since the late nineteenth century. In addition, humanitarian agencies claiming to be ‘principled’ have been victims of attacks as much as others. History and current practice tell us that neither IHL nor humanitarian principles provide safety or can guide our decisions. Accepting their symbolic value, rather than their unrealised potential to protect and solve operational dilemmas, would free humanitarian agencies from endless speculations. Translated by Nina Friedman.

Liliya Karachurina, Nikita Mkrtchyan

Ravenstein, writing in 19th century papers, observed that migration varied with the life course. However, he did not investigate this variation in detail, as the necessary data were not then available. Age-specific migration has been a focus for researchers of migration in the 20th and 21st centuries. Building on this research, the current paper explores age-specific migration in Russia focussing on its spatial diversity. We compare age-specific migration patterns found in Russia and those observed in other developed countries. For this investigation, we mainly use Russian administrative data on residence registration for 2012-2016, together with information on populations by age in the latest census in 2010. The data are analysed using a classification of local administrative units classified by degree of remoteness from Russia’s principal cities (regional centres). The main results are as follows: In Russia, young people participate strongly in migration flows between peripheral territories and regional centres. The net migration surplus in regional centres is mostly produced by the migration of 15-19 year-olds starting further and higher education courses. Peak migration occurs in this age group. This type of migration represents upward mobility in the spatial hierarchy because institutions of higher education are located in the large cities. People aged 20-29 and 30-39 migrate in much smaller numbers, but they also replenish the population of regional centres. The inflow of middle-aged migrants and families with children was directed to the areas located closest to the regional centres, the suburbs. This type of migration is observed in regions with a well-developed middle class with high purchasing power, for example, in the city of Moscow and in the Moscow Region. Peripheral territories have similar profiles of age-specific migration, but of loss rather than gain. The farther they are from regional centres, the more significant the outflow of young people and the stronger the impact of migration on population ageing. The rural periphery and small cities attract only elderly migrants, but this inflow is far smaller than the outflow of young people. The directions and age selectivity of migration observed in other countries are thus also found in Russia, although there are important differences associated with the nature of housing in Russian cities and regions. * This article belongs to a special issue on “Internal Migration as a Driver of Regional Population Change in Europe: Updating Ravenstein”.

Rachel Sabates-Wheeler

Abstract In recent years, forcibly displaced populations have attracted enormous media attention as an increasing number of disasters and political conflicts push more and more people to move away from their homes and seek refuge and opportunities in other places. At the same time, political nervousness about the financial and institutional capability of ‘receiving’ locations to adequately respond to the needs of these large-scale population movements contributes to the shrinking space for thinking about the rights and needs of people on the move. It is precisely because of these global trends that the plight of forcibly displaced populations is becoming more precarious and vulnerable, yet standard social protection provision rarely attends to the plight of these people. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the remit and implications for including a consideration of forcibly displaced populations (including internally displaced people, refugees and asylum seekers) within social protection policy and programming. Drawing on a limited number of recent initiatives, we suggest some ways in which social protection can be ‘opened’ for these groups.

Inka Stock, Ayşen Üstübici, Susanne U. Schultz

Abstract The term “externalization” is used by a range of migration scholars, policy makers and the media to describe the extension of border and migration controls beyond the so-called ‘migrant receiving nations’ in the Global North and into neighboring countries or sending states in the Global South. It refers to a wide range of practices from controls of borders, rescue operations, to measures addressing the drivers of migration. The ambition of this Special Issue is to contribute to the mapping of the responses to externalization dynamics. The different articles in this volume are chosen to exemplify some of these processes at different levels of analysis. Through diverse disciplinary perspectives, the authors show how practices of externalization are being confronted, succumbed, modified and contested by individual (would-be) migrants, civil society actors and the host states’ institutions in different parts of the globe. In an effort to move away from a sole focus on border zones in the Global North, the Special Issue contributes to emerging literature shifting the locus of analysis to places in the Global South, which are conventionally understood as “transit” or “sending” countries in Africa, America as well as within Europe itself.

Micha G. Keijer, Aart C. Liefbroer, Ineke Nagel

In recent studies on the association between education and fertility, increased attention has been paid to the field of study. Women who studied in traditionally more “feminine” fields, like care, teaching, and health, were found to have their children earlier and to have more children than other women. A point of debate in this literature is on the causal direction of this relationship. Does the field of study change the attitudes towards family formation, or do young adults with stronger family-life attitudes self-select into educational fields that emphasize care, teaching, and health? Or do both field of study preferences and family-life attitudes arise before actual choices in these domains are made? We contribute to this debate by examining the relationship between fertility expectations and expected fields of study and occupation among 14-17 year-old adolescents. We use data collected in 2005 from 1500 Dutch adolescents and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to examine the associations between expected field of study and occupation and fertility expectations. Our results show that expectations concerning fertility and field of study are already interrelated during secondary education. Both female and male adolescents who expect to pursue studies in fields that focus on care and social interaction (like health care, teaching etc.) are less likely to expect to remain childless. This holds equally for girls and boys. In addition, girls who more strongly aspire to an occupation in which communication skills are important also expect to have more children. We did not find any relationship between expectations of pursuing a communicative field of study and occupation and expectations of earlier parenthood. In addition, among boys, we find that the greater their expectation of opting for an economics, a technical, or a communicative field of study, the less likely they were to expect to remain childless. Boys who expected to study in the economic field also expect to have their first child earlier, but boys expecting to pursue a technical course of studies expect to enter parenthood later. We also found that those who expect to pursue cultural studies are more likely to have a preference for no children, or if they do want children, to have them later in life. Overall, our findings suggest that the processes of elective affinity between the communicative fields of study and work on the one hand and fertility on the other hand are more or less comparable for boys and girls. With respect to the other domains, we find, apart from the gender differences in the relation between fields of study and childlessness, hardly or no gender differences in the expected timing of parenthood and the number of children. The genders do differ in their level of preference for communicative and economics-related fields of study and occupation, but if they do have the same preference, the association with fertility expectations is more or less similar.

Nadja Milewski, Sarah Carol

This paper studies attitudes toward abortion among the second generation of Turkish migrants and their native counterparts in six western and northern European countries. We focus on Turkish migrants because they not only constitute one of the largest immigrant groups, but are also hypothesised to be culturally and demographically very distinctive from the native group. We used data from the project on “The Integration of the European Second Generation (TIES 2007-08)” from Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. The sample consisted of 4,761 respondents aged 18 to 35, 49.5 percent of whom were children of Turkish migrants born in Europe and 51.5 percent belonged to the respective non-migrant comparison groups. Unlike in other surveys, the question regarding attitudes toward abortion in the TIES questionnaire distinguished between “medical” and “non-medical” reasons for abortion, with the possible answers being “never”, “in specific cases” and “always”. We carried out multinomial logistic regression analyses and investigated three research questions: 1) Departing from assimilation theory, we examined whether the attitudes of migrant descendants differed from those of their non-migrant counterparts. Our results show that both groupings under study expressed a range of attitudes, and that abortion for medical reasons was more accepted than abortion for non-medical reasons. However, second-generation Turks were more likely than the natives to say that they would never accept abortion. 2) We investigated the extent to which the societal climate and the integration context of the respondents influenced their attitudes toward abortion, while assuming that we would find cross-country variation in these attitudes. Our results reveal that among natives, levels of acceptance of abortion are lowest in Germany and highest in Sweden and France. We found a similar country pattern for women and men of the second Turkish generation. 3) We explored the degree to which the respondents’ family contexts (childhood backgrounds as well as current socio-demographic variables) influenced their attitudes toward abortion. While these factors partially explained the variation within the Turkish second generation and within the native comparison group, the country differences remained significant. We conclude that attitudes toward abortion in the Turkish second generation are influenced by their family backgrounds, but also by their socialization experiences in European receiving countries. These findings suggest that cultural assimilation processes are occurring, but not to the point where the attitudes of migrant descendants have converged with the attitudes of natives in the respective destination country.   * This article belongs to a special issue on migrant fertility.

Olga Pötzsch

Die Bevölkerungsvorausberechnungen des Statistischen Bundesamtes zeigen einen voraussichtlichen Rückgang der Geborenenzahl in den 2020er Jahren. Zu dieser Entwicklung wird eine tendenziell rückläufige Anzahl der potenziellen Mütter in Kombination mit einer angenommenen weiterhin niedrigen Geburtenrate führen. Angesichts der vor dem Zensus 2011 vorliegenden empirischen Befunde gab es keine Hinweise darauf, dass eine im nächsten Jahrzehnt eventuell deutlich steigende Geburtenhäufigkeit die sinkende Anzahl potenzieller Mütter kompensieren würde. Der Zensus 2011 hat aber zu Korrekturen in der Bevölkerungsgröße, in der Altersstruktur und folglich in den relativen Maßzahlen der Fertilität wie z.B. der zusammengefassten Geburtenziffer und der endgültigen Kinderzahl je Frau geführt. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, die Auswirkungen des Zensus 2011 auf die Maßzahlen der Fertilität zu quantifizieren und bisherige Befunde zu den Fertilitätstrends auf der zensusjustierten Datengrundlage auf ihre Gültigkeit zu prüfen. Ein besonderes Augenmerk liegt auf den Analysen zur Kohortenfertilität und den Folgen der immer späteren Familiengründung für die endgültige Kinderzahl und die Paritätsverteilung. Anhand von zahlreichen Befunden wird gezeigt, dass ein kontinuierlicher Wiederanstieg der endgültigen Kinderzahl je Frau in den kommenden zwei Jahrzehnten ohne Trendwende im Geburtenverhalten nicht realisierbar ist. Allein um den zunehmenden Rückgang der Fertilität im Alter unter 30 Jahren ab Jahrgang 1974 zu kompensieren und dadurch eine Stabilisierung der endgültigen Kinderzahl auf dem relativ niedrigen Niveau zwischen 1,5 und 1,6 Kindern je Frau zu erreichen, wäre eine verstärkte Zunahme der Fertilität im Alter ab 30 Jahren erforderlich. Ein Anstieg und eine anschließende Stabilisierung der endgültigen Kinderzahl auf dem Niveau von mindestens 1,6 Kindern je Frau würde darüber hinaus eine Trendumkehr in der Entwicklung der Kinderlosenquote und deutliche Veränderungen im Geburtentiming voraussetzen

Natascha Nisic, Sören Petermann

Despite the significance of spatially proximate social contacts, there is little evidence about the effects of residential mobility on the social capital available to an individual. Based on theoretical considerations of the accumulation process of social capital after relocation, we derive hypotheses about the consequences of residential mobility on social capital. Firstly, we expect a partial devaluation of social capital in the origin region after the move and compensatory investments in social capital at the new location. Secondly, we assume that social capital increases with the length of residence and distinguish accumulation and consolidation phases. Multivariate analysis based on survey data yields the expected consequences of mobility. Movers and native residents possess an equal amount of social capital; however, the composition of social capital differs between the two groups. Additionally, we decompose the length of residence into several time intervals to provide evidence for both the constituting and consolidating phases in the creation of social capital.

Johannes Huinink, Michael Feldhaus

Fertility behaviour is closely related to other dimensions of the individual life course, which are strongly interrelated themselves. Regarding the impact of job-related spatial mobility, empirical findings show a negative correlation between having children and commuting, particularly for women. Up to now, fertility intentions have not been thoroughly investigated in this respect. Longitudinal studies are lacking, too. In this paper, the effects of commuting arrangements of men and women on the intention of having a child within the next two years as well as the probability of realising this intention are addressed. The assumption is, that after accounting for other important factors (employment status, level of qualification, type of consensual union, number of children, residential mobility), medium- and long-distance commuting is negatively related to the fertility intention of women and its realisation. For men, effects are assumed to be nonexistent or even slightly positive. Longitudinal data from the first three waves of the German “Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics” (pairfam) are used to test the hypotheses. Firstly, a cross-sectional, multivariate probit-regression (with correlated errors) on the intention to have a child within two years, on being childless and on medium- and long- distance commuting is applied. The model shows no significant correlation between commuting and the intention to have a child; it does however show a correlation between medium- and long distance commuting and the probability of women to be childless. Secondly, a longitudinal difference model on changing fertility intentions between panel wave 1 and wave 3 is estimated. For women, a positive effect can be found of interrupting medium- and long-distance commuting or, surprisingly, continuing medium- and long-distance commuting on the intention to have a child within two years. Thirdly, for men and women who reported a fertility intention in the first wave, a longitudinal Heckman-selection probit-regression on the probability of having a child between wave 1 and wave 3 is estimated. It shows negative effects of medium- and long-distance commuting on having a child. Taken together, these findings support the assumption that commuting plays a characteristically different role in different phases of the fertility-related decision process.