The Economist - USA (2020-08-29)

TheEconomistAugust 29th 2020 39

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skedwhathe makes of his new home,
Safwan Daher, a Syrian refugee, chuck-
les: Duderstadt, a town near Göttingen that
few Germans could find on a map, is “bor-
ing”. No matter. Mr Daher has an enjoyable
computer-programming job that pays for a
flat with three bedrooms. He keeps one
empty, hoping his parents will leave Syria
and join him. In his spare time he hangs
out with his brother, a student at Göttingen
University. The next step is German citi-
zenship, for which he has just applied.
Karam Kabbani, an activist who fled
Aleppo after Bashar al-Assad’s thugs tor-
tured him, has had a rougher time. Ner-
vously chain-smoking, he describes an an-
guished five years bouncing from one
agency to another, forced to take dead-end
jobs, with no help offered for his psycho-
logical scars. He plans to leave Germany
when he can. “Germans are very closed
people,” he says. “No one wants to help.”
On August 31st 2015, with a growing
number of asylum-seekers reaching Ger-
many, Angela Merkel declared: “Wir schaf-

fen das” (roughly, “We can handle this”). A

few days later the chancellor opened the

borders to migrants stranded in Budapest,

amplifying the wave: perhaps 1.2m reached

Germany before Balkan border closures

and a deal with Turkey in 2016 stemmed the

flow. Initially Germany handled the mi-

grants well. Yet five years on, its experience

of integrating them has been mixed.

Start with jobs. In 2015 an influx of

mainly young migrants looked a neat fit for

German firms facing an ageing labour

force. Daimler’s boss foresaw an “eco-

nomic miracle”. Rules were eased for asy-

lum-seekers looking for jobs, and the gov-

ernment pushed 1.1m through integration

and language courses. By 2018 43% of the

working-age asylum-seekers who arrived

between 2013 and 2016 were in work or

training (compared with over 75% for the

same age group in Germany as a whole)—

better than the wave of refugees from Yu-

goslavia in the 1990s. (A stronger labour

market helped.) Jobs came slowly at first,

but accelerated as people emerged from in-

tegration courses, which hints at better to

come. “These numbers are not perfect, but

they are hopeful,” says Marlene Thiele, who

runs a project at the German Chamber of

Commerce to help firms hire refugees.

The headline figure conceals some awk-

ward details. Barely half the refugees in

Germany’s labour force today work in

skilled jobs, although over 80% did in their

home countries, calculates Herbert

Brücker at the Institute for Employment

Research, the research arm of the Federal

Employment Agency. Many wash dishes in

restaurants or make beds in hotels, with

few prospects for advancement (and a high

chance of covid-related layoffs). Women in

Germany’s refugee influx

Did they handle it?

BERLIN AND GÖTTINGEN
Five years after Angela Merkel welcomed a million migrants, integration
is a mixed bag

Working faster

Germany, % of refugees starting first employment

Aged 15-64

Source:InstituteforEmploymentResearch(IAB)

80

60

40

20

0

60483624120

Months since arrival

Arrivals from

1990-2013

Arrivals since 2013

Europe

40 Green-fingeredBulgarians

41 Montenegro’selection

41 Frenchhighereducation

42 Charlemagne: The Pampers index

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