Distance is crucially important, at least for neighbors – foreign employment at the district level

We study the regional representation of foreign workers from each EU-27 country in German regions. For most of the German neighboring countries, we find that distance significantly matters for the workplace location in Germany. The striking exception is Poland. For non-neighboring countries, distance only matters for countries which are geographically close to Germany. Distance has also a negative effect on the net-migrations flows of foreign workers from geographically close countries. We confirm the state-specific effects of distance using a random effects approach. Approaches with different estimation techniques at different time points back up our findings.