Jonas Wiedner

Dr. Jonas Wiedner is a Research Fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, working within the Research Department Migration, Integration, Transnationalization (Migration and Diversity Department). Based in Berlin at Reichpietschufer 50, room B 415, he leads the "Unequal Trajectories" project, a collaborative research initiative with LifBi Bamberg and IAB Nürnberg funded by the Leibnizgesellschaft under the SAW competition program. His work focuses on the intersection of spatial processes and social integration, particularly examining how residential mobility and neighborhood contexts shape immigrant integration trajectories.

Wiedner's research interests span migration studies, social stratification, labor market dynamics, and spatial sociology. His work particularly investigates qualification mismatch in labor markets, the role of ethno-religious neighborhood infrastructures in immigrant well-being, and the economic adaptation of immigrant groups in changing labor markets. He employs mixed-method approaches combining quantitative analysis of large-scale datasets with spatial analysis techniques, often using innovative methodologies to address self-selection issues in neighborhood effects research. His comparative work between Germany and the United Kingdom provides important insights into how different institutional contexts shape educational and labor market outcomes.

His publication record demonstrates consistent scholarly output in top-tier journals including Social Forces, Urban Studies, International Migration Review, and Social Science Research. Wiedner's research reveals important patterns about how refugees navigate residential choices with trade-offs between immediate needs and long-term integration prospects, how educational expansion affects qualification mismatch differently across national contexts, and how neighborhood characteristics differentially impact immigrants versus their descendants. His work on Turkish immigrants in Germany shows how structural economic changes have exacerbated labor market inequalities rather than facilitating economic assimilation.

As principal investigator of the "Unequal Trajectories" project, Wiedner directs research examining how residential mobility and spatial context shape multidimensional integration trajectories of refugees, particularly comparing those who arrived around 2015 with Ukrainians arriving after February 2022. The project combines longitudinal and geocoded data from multiple sources to analyze integration across language acquisition, inter-ethnic contacts, sense of belonging, children's learning, labor market outcomes, health, and subjective well-being. This research provides evidence necessary for designing effective refugee accommodation policies that balance immediate humanitarian needs with long-term integration outcomes.