Decisions concerning job-related spatial mobility and their impact on family careers in France and Germany

Abstract

Job-related spatial mobility raises questions about women’s and men’s professional life. It does not always accompany a specific job or a promotion; it may also arise as the consequence of being in a dual-career couple. We will study how the decision is handled by bi-active couples, compared to couples who live according to the more classical ‘male breadwinner model’, and how other socio-demographic factors, especially the presence of children, influence the decision in favour of mobility. We will compare data on France and Germany drawn from the European Survey Job Mobilities and Family Lives (2007) realised in six European countries. Women’s employment rates and family policies are not the same in the two countries. While France has for several years provided solutions to help women remain in the labour force while raising children, Germany only recently abandoned a mother-centred family policy which pushed women to stay at home while raising their children. Statistical data will be completed by results from two qualitative studies to see more precisely how job mobility is experienced concretely. One study was realised in France in 2006. Results from the other study in Germany in 2001 will be reported. Both place the accent on mobile people who spend several days a week away from home. A typology of ‘family careers’, developed in the French study and applied to the French and German data shows that couples differ with regard to the decision-making processes on mobility, which reveal different underlying partnership patterns.
 Zusammenfassung
 Beruflich bedingte räumliche Mobilität stellt die Frage nach der Erwerbsarbeit von Männern und Frauen. Es geht dabei aber nicht nur um die Entscheidung für einen bestimmten Beruf oder für einen Karriereschritt. Mobilität kann auch eine Folge von Doppelerwerbstätigkeit eines Paares sein. Wir gehen der Frage nach, wie die Entscheidung bei bi-aktiven Paaren im Verhältnis zu mono-aktiven Paaren getroffen wird und inwieweit andere soziodemographische Faktoren, besonders die Anwesenheit von Kindern in der Familie, Mobilitätsentscheidungen beeinflussen. Wir vergleichen deutsche und französische Daten, die in einer europäischen in sechs Ländern durchgeführten Studie Job Mobilities and Family Lives (2007) erhoben wurden. Die Erwerbstätigkeit von Frauen und die Familienpolitik sind in beiden Ländern relativ unterschiedlich. Während Frankreich schon seit Jahren Mütter mit konkreten Maßnahmen unterstützt, die es ermöglichen einer Erwerbstätigkeit nachzugehen, ist die Familienpolitik in Deutschland erst kürzlich von dem mutterzentrierten Modell abgekommen, dass Frauen darin unterstützte zuhause zu bleiben und die Kinder zu erziehen. Die statistische Auswertung wird vervollständigt durch Ergebnisse aus zwei qualitativen Studien. Die eine wurde 2006 in Frankreich durchgeführt. Die Ergebnisse der zweiten 2001 in Deutschland durchgeführten Studie werden berichtet. Beide Studien interessieren sich für Mobilitätsformen, die mehrere Tage Abwesen¬heit von zuhause verlangen. Eine Typologie unterschiedlicher „Familienkarrieren“, die im Rahmen der französischen Studie ausgearbeitet worden ist, wird hier zur Analyse des deutschen und französischen Materials herangezogen. Die Paare unterscheiden sich in Bezug auf den Entscheidungsprozess bezüglich der Mobilität und dieser wiederum hat unterschiedliche Partnerschaftskonzepte als Grundlage.

Is commuting a daily behavior? Rhythmic evidence as of France, 2019

“…Our results about the demographic and socioeconomic features of long range commuters are consistent with previous findings about long distance commuters: that they are mainly male (Baldazzi & Romano, 2006;Collet & Bonnet, 2010;Wachter & Holz-Rau, 2022), middleaged (Baldazzi & Romano, 2006) and with managerial positions (Jeong et al, 2013).…”

“…Here the twofold definition of commuting rhythms is focused on a usual workplace: it does not integrate Work from home or in other places. It may well be the reason why the 1% of overnighters in our sample is much less than the 5% of overnighters observed in France in JobMob panels (Collet & Bonnet, 2010) that consider all places for professional purposes. In the same vein, the 1% share of mono-day long range commuting in our sample is much less than the 5% observed in JobMob using a different criterion of daily travel time beyond 2 hours, instead of one way crow-fly distance above 80 km in our sample.…”

“…Typical profiles of long-distance commuters have been found consistently in different studies including JobMob (Baldazzi & Romano, 2006;Collet & Bonnet, 2010;Jeong et al, 2013;Ravalet et al, 2017;Wachter & Holz-Rau, 2022): strong shares of male workers, middleaged, highly-educated, with managerial positions and higher income-levels. Economic issues of long-distance commuting have been studied in the form of the impacts, in Germany, on individual careers (Viry et al 2014) and job performance (Abendroth et al, 2022).…”

“…The European research project "JobMob" on job mobility and family lives specifically addressed long distance commuting in six European countries by means of panel surveys first in 2006 and second in 2009-2010: "long distance commuters" being defined as those making a return trip of more than 2 hours every working day, and "overnighters" as those spending at least 60 nights a year away from home on professional purposes (Collet & Bonnet, 2010). As of 2007, the shares of daily long distance commuters were found of 5% both in France and Germany, along with 5% of overnighters in France and 7% in Germany.…”

“…We address the specific case of commuting mobility in France as of 2018-2019 on the basis of the nation-wide household travel survey (HTS) called "EMP 2018-2019". The emphasis on commuting rhythms goes beyond the definitions in the JobMob panels and the derived studies of long distance commuting in France that were mainly targeted to social issues: work-life balance and conjugal quality (Viry et al, 2010), parenthood issues (Ruger & Viry, 2017;Romero-Balsas, 2022), gender inequalities in the determination of professional careers (Collet & Bonnet, 2010), economic issues and the potential impact of the 2008 financial crisis on daily long-distance commuting and overnighting (Ravalet et al, 2017). The emphasis on rhythms is also distinctive from previous studies of long distance commuting in France that assumed a daily basis on addressing modal usage (Orfeuil & Soleyret, 2002), residential location patterns (Zaninetti, 1999;Ravalet et al, 2014), urban forms (Aguilera & Mignot, 2004;Aguilera & Voisin, 2014) or urban systems (Conti, 2017(Conti, , 2019.…”