A recent study indicates that the cliché of migrants with low-skilled qualifications as an integration failure and a social loser is not true. The study shows: migrants often have a higher income than equally qualified employees without migration background. This applies in particular to groups with typically uneducated families of origin.

In Germany early school leavers with Turkish background earn approximately 2,20 Euro per hour more than locals without a school-leaving qualification. They earn more, because they carry out activities which demand a higher educational level for example as a machine operator, a plant operator or a construction plant operator. For people with Italian or Greek background the results performed similarly. In contrast, low-skilled workers without migration background rarely take the step into challenging occupations.

In a study ISS researcher Merlin Schaeffer together with Jutta Höhne (WSI – Hans Böckler Foundation) and Céline Teney (University of Bremen) compared the income of locals with the income of migrants who visited school in Germany bv using micro-census data from 2005 to 2011. In order to ensure that the results are comparable, they examined only that part of the income which statistically cannot be attributed neither to individual characteristics such as age, gender or marital status nor to regional wage levels and a range of other labour-market relevant conditions.

The three sociologists declare the operative findings against the background of the research into educational success of children with a migration background: children of immigrants set higher education goals in spite of their less well academic performance and are very motivated to improve their social status. Because someone who took on emigration from one country to another did this with the firm intention to build a better life.
According to the authors of the study, the ambitions of the immigrant parents reflect the ambitious goals of their children. However, at the same time immigrants cannot often assist their children enough with homework and with decisions about their school career, because they are lacking in language skills, education and material resources and they are not familiar with the German school system. Due to this disadvantage, the children of immigrants cannot acquire the educational certificates which would correspond to their high ambitions, diligence and stamina.