08/04/2025 - DemoSoc Seminar: Going online: New forms of transnational relationships among refugees from Syria and Afghanistan in Germany

The DemoSoc seminars at Universitat Pompeu Fabra aims to gather all researchers at UPF and beyond working on the fields of demography and sociology (social stratification).

The next DemoSoc Seminar of this course will take place on:

April, 8th

12.00 h 

20.283 (Jaume I)

Going online: New forms of transnational relationships among refugees from Syria and Afghanistan in Germany

Prof. Dr. Irena Kogan, University of Manheim, Germany,  will be in charge of leading the session.

Abstract: The increasing use of online partner searching raises important questions about its effects on ethnic homogamy as well as the role of selection into online partner search—a topic with mixed findings in the literature. This study examines the role of the internet in partnership formation among young male refugees from Syria and Afghanistan in Germany, a group facing limited access to co-national partners and encountering social stigma within German society. We employ the unique PARFORM dataset, collected in 2022-2023 with 3,400 respondents, and apply entropy balancing to disentangle selection into and outcomes of partner searches.

Our findings reveal distinct patterns of selectivity among individuals who date exclusively online, exclusively offline, and those who use both modes, as well as those who have not formed partnerships since migrating or who married early. Results indicate that, after accounting for self-selection, partnerships initiated online involve higher shares of co-national partners from abroad, a potential explanation being access to larger pools of individuals with shared language. Conversely, offline means of finding a partner serve as a key avenue for forming connections with Germans offering a wider range of partner diversity. The study’s findings suggest that refugees may strategically use online platforms to overcome limited access to female co-nationals in Germany, leveraging digital tools to maintain cultural endogamy in their partnerships and establishing a new form of online transnational relationships.