Arriving in Germany: The Impact of State Support on the Integration of Newcomers

As a destination country for immigrants, Germany continues to face multiple challenges, such as maintaining social cohesion in light of rising right-wing populism and an increasingly polarised discourse on migration and integration, the ageing of German society and the shortage of skilled workers in many sectors, as well as the arrival of protection-seekers from various countries, which calls for needs-centred, innovative approaches.

The project is divided into modules that address different facets of arrival and settlement.

Module 1. Shaping arrival locally: We examine the structural conditions and obstacles that determine whether resilient local integration support structures can emerge. Within this module, we focus on refugees with special protection needs who, owing to a health condition or care responsibilities, are unable to work, or able to do so only to a limited extent, and whose integration is unlikely to happen through labour market participation.

Module 2. Digital and remote work of forced migrants across borders: We focus on forms of transnational living through digital work across borders in the context of flight and displacement.

Module 3. Gender, migration and the welfare state: We examine the interplay between migration and gender, for instance regarding access to welfare state services or perspectives on economic independence.

Module 4. Cultural participation: We focus on refugees' and new immigrants' experiences of participating in (cultural) leisure activities at the local level, as well as on the strategies used by local authorities and cultural institutions to anticipate the needs of these groups.

Module 5. Civil society support structures and integration trajectories: We analyse the role of so-called citizen-led support structures for refugees (refugee support organisations) in individual integration processes.

Module 6. The equitable municipality: Models of integration and public service provision: This synthesising module foregrounds questions concerning the moral principles of local integration work in Germany, as well as its systemic or institutional conditions. Contributions focus on models of collaboration between the integration actors involved at the local level, along with the related questions of fairness and equity that structure the work on the ground.

If integration is understood as a process, it should be divided into phases, which are characterised by different dynamics. A normative understanding of integration as assimilation results in research focusing on the 'final' outcomes of the process. Such research tends to give insufficient theoretical attention to the respective phases and their differences, even though we know how important the first phases of integration are for subsequent integration processes.

The findings are intended to expand integration theories by adding a life-phase-specific perspective on the integration processes of immigrants who, in addition to remaining in the country or moving onwards, sometimes choose a transnational lifestyle. We also want to contribute to theoretical debates by critically examining categories such as highly qualified migrants or refugees in a context of temporary protection and transnational living.

The study focuses on how government action—for example, administrative processes, or labour market integration measures—shapes the integration processes of newcomers.

The aim is to gain knowledge about local governments' strategies for handling different immigrant groups with varying needs, to draw conclusions about barriers to participation created by institutionalised processes of inclusion and exclusion. For example, we examine how the actors responsible for implementation in public institutions perceive transnational living arrangements or different legal statuses when administering social services.

The project uses various research approaches: (i) participatory dialogue formats in selected German municipalities; (ii) in-depth qualitative interviews with newcomers and representatives from local public administration and civil society; (iii) secondary analysis of a qualitative panel data set on refugee families from Ukraine (2022–2024); (iv) analyses drawn from existing quantitative data sets, including the FReDA panel, the German register of associations and data on integrated employment biographies (IEB) from the Institute for Employment Research (IAB); and (v) qualitative focus groups with Migrant Self-Organisations.

Modules 2 (digital employment across borders) and 3 (care work in transnational families) demonstrate how newcomers' integration efforts are shaped by familial care obligations. This finding underscores the processual nature of arriving locally. Using the example of transnational employment, we further illustrate that state regulations and integration programmes run counter to the transnational lived realities of those affected and impede the maintenance of transnational ties—which may be essential to family life and productive for the labour market—thereby also hampering economic self-sufficiency.

Likewise, our work on local integration governance and resilience shows that (municipal) integration approaches are designed in insufficiently inclusive ways (Modules 1 and 3), with the result that the intersectional needs of persons with experiences of forced displacement and disability/chronic illness, or with care obligations, remain underserved. The absence of intersectionally designed provisions and the lack of sensitivity in mainstream services (such as integration courses) lead de facto to the exclusion of migrants with health-related protection needs and of those with familial care responsibilities.

Various project modules highlight the importance of: (i) multilingual, target-group-oriented awareness-raising about public services and benefits; (ii) diversity-sensitive, inclusive and sustainably financed integration support programmes; and (iii) a shift towards a positive discourse on migrant integration in order to support social participation in Germany.