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

Germany, as a destination country of immigrants, continues facing multiple challenges, such as the maintenance of 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 which enable resilient local integration support. Within this module, we focus on refugees with special protection needs who, due to a health conditions, age or care responsibilities, are not able to work, or only to a limited extent, and whose integration is unlikely 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 & 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 the experiences of refugees and new immigrants to participate in (cultural) leisure activities at the local level, as well as 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.

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 insufficiently theorise on the respective phases and their differences, even though we know about the importance of the first phases of integration for further integration processes.

The study focuses on how government action – for example, administrative processes, labour market integration measures, or family support programmes – shapes the integration processes of newcomers.
The aim is to gain knowledge about local governments’ strategies of handling of different immigrant groups with various needs, in order to draw conclusions on barriers to participation through institutionalised processes of inclusion and exclusion. For example, we examine how implementing actors from public institutions perceive transnational living arrangements or different legal statuses when administering social services.

The project uses various research approaches: (i) participatory dialogue formats with 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 with 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).

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 critically investigating categories, such as highly qualified migrants or refugees in a context of temporary protection and transnational living.

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 to support social anchoring in Germany.