How can refugees be successfully integrated into the economy as a whole?

According to IAB estimates, around 1.1 million refugees were registered in the EASY system in 2015. Immigration slowed down in the first three months of 2016, with only 21,000 people newly registered in March 2016. Nevertheless, the influx of refugees poses a challenge of unprecedented dimensions. Most of the refugees are not expected to return to their home countries for a long time once they have been recognized. It is therefore a central task of politics and society to integrate these people into the German labor market and the German education system.

Past experience with immigration does not suggest that refugees who have been granted the right to stay will achieve a similar level of labor market participation and comparable income to native Germans in the short term. This makes it all the more important to set the right course for successful integration at an early stage. What is needed is an integration policy that removes existing barriers to access to education and the labor market. Previous experience with labor market integration must be taken into account as much as possible.

The aim of the study is to gain new insights into the preconditions and obstacles to labor market integration, combine these with existing findings and thus create the basis for evaluating policy options.

The key question of the study is “How can refugees be successfully integrated into the economy as a whole?”. First of all, it is crucial that refugees are integrated into the labor market in the best possible way. In macroeconomic terms, labor market integration is successful if it not only avoids negative repercussions for the local workforce, but also generates immigration benefits for the local population. This study focuses on the labor market integration of refugees - both in terms of the scope and quality of integration - as a key prerequisite for successful integration in the economy as a whole.

The first part of the study provides a systematic and up-to-date literature review on the labor market integration of refugees. Existing evaluations of political measures to promote integration will also be included.

In the second part of the study, qualitative expert interviews and group discussions will be conducted with refugees, companies and actors in the employment services in order to identify factors that promote and hinder successful integration into work and vocational training.

The results of the first two steps form the basis for the evaluation of policy options and further conclusions in the third part.