Impact of policy on integration trajectories

Integration Department

Project head: Dr. Niklas Harder

Project team members: Samir Khalil

Running time January 2021 until December 2022
Status Completed project

Politics has a direct and indirect effect on the integration processes of migrants in Germany at various levels through laws, regulations and instructions for action. Measures that relate specifically to migrants (e.g. citizenship reform or the definition of a good perspective to stay) can be understood as having a direct effect, while general political measures that also have an effect on migrants (e.g. the Good Childcare Act or all-day schools) can be understood as having an indirect effect. The overarching question of how political measures affect integration trajectories will be examined in this project on the basis of specific political measures.

From the overarching question of how political measures affect integration trajectories, this project will look at individual political measures. Due to elements such as cut-off dates and deadlines, the introduction of laws and regulations often results in quasi-experimental situations which, given the right data, can be used to evaluate the effect of political measures. In this respect, the selection of suitable questions depends primarily on detailed research on individual measures and corresponding data. This task will accompany the project throughout its entire duration.

In preparation for the project, particularly relevant and easily evaluable measures have already been identified. This results in two focal points of the project:

1. how do naturalisation initiatives work?

For a long time, the number and rate of naturalisations in Germany have been significantly below the EU or OECD average. Since the implementation of naturalisation is a municipal responsibility, some cities and municipalities have launched naturalisation initiatives to increase the number of naturalisations. The effectiveness of these campaigns has not yet been extensively studied. This project asks how exactly such campaigns are implemented and whether they increase the number of naturalisations.

2 Does the "veil of night" show evidence of discriminatory policing in road traffic?

For many people, interaction with representatives of the executive is the most direct interaction with the state. One example of this is contact with police officers in road traffic. At the latest after the media reported on various chat groups in which police officers exchanged radical right-wing content, the question of how widespread discriminatory policing is has been discussed in the German public.

A "veil of darkness" design has already been used in various studies in the USA to address this question for policing. The assumption here is that darkness makes discriminatory policing more difficult and that this effect should be measurable around dusk. To test whether this method can also be used to prove discriminatory policing in Germany, we combine data from the Federal Motor Transport Authority with data on the position of the sun and compare the entries before and after dusk.

In addition to the evaluations already mentioned, intensive research on other political measures is also part of the work content of this project. Whether a past policy measure can be evaluated on the basis of available survey or administrative data often depends on details. The task of this project is also to examine these details and to further identify evaluation possibilities that can possibly be focused on in follow-up projects.

Funding: Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (Institutional funding)