An investigation into the indicators of social and economic integration of refugees in Germany

Between 2015 and 2020, about 1.5 million refugees arrived in Germany. Due to this new influx of refugees, there has been a political debate in Germany about how immigrants should be managed and integrated into society, however, to date there has been limited research from a local or project perspective. This led to Zimmermann (2016), to question whether Germany was fully prepared to integrate these newcomers into German society and called for further research. To address this call, the study’s aim was to investigate how refugees are integrated in Germany from a theoretical and practical perspective, then determine whether the integration policies and strategies adopted were effective. In achieving this aim and addressing this lack of academic knowledge from a social connection and economic perspective, the study directly drew on three seminal studies, that of Ager and Strang (2002, 2004, 2008), Kuhlman (1991) and Gürer (2019). These studies provided the academic framework to conduct an inductive qualitative strategy to interview four groups of participants from 4 projects from different socio-economic regions. The participants were project managers, governmental officials, project representatives, and recent integrated refugees. The outcome of the study’s findings showed there was a need for Federal government to provide a strategic direction and a commitment to local and project levels as to how to integrate refugees. Part of the process also needed to have established a mechanism by which Federal government can measure the integration process through measurable KPIs. The main academic contribution of this study is the creation of an overarching 11th domain called ‘participation’ to Ager and Strang’s (2008) original model. From the practical perspective, the study contended that there is a need for Federal government guidelines to be established and cascaded throughout all the levels of responsibility, from State to project level. At an individual project level, an integration plan must be used to monitor the progress using KPIs which are informed by Federal government. Based on the outcome of this study, future studies could build on this initial piece of research by conducting a mixed method study, while focusing on the local community experiences of refugee integration