OECD SOCIAL, EMPLOYMENT AND MIGRATION WORKING PAPERS The Labour Market Integration of Immigrants in Germany

This series is designed to make available to a wider readership selected labour market, social policy and migration studies prepared for use within the OECD. Authorship is usually collective, but principal writers are named. The papers are generally available only in their original language – English or French – with a summary in the other. The opinions expressed and arguments employed here are the responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD The author wishes to thank all interlocutors during the missions to Germany, as well as the Working Party and conference participants for valuable information and fruitful discussions. 3 DELSA/ELSA/WD/SEM(2007)2 SUMMARY 1. The current situation of the labour market integration of migrants in Germany has to be viewed in the light of its immigration history. During the postwar economic boom, until 1973, Germany focused on the recruitment of low-skilled foreign labour. Many of these " guestworker " immigrants settled and were joined by their foreign spouses, which has given rise to a second generation of persons with an immigrant background. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Germany received massive immigration flows of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. Shortly after the peak immigration of ethnic Germans, Germany received large numbers of humanitarian migrants. German statistics only distinguish along nationality lines. This hampers assessment of the situation as this does not take account of ethnic Germans – who have German nationality and are now the most important immigrant group, although they face difficulties similar to those of other migrant groups. Assessment based on nationality is also problematic since immigrants with a foreign nationality have increasingly and selectively taken up German citizenship. There is a clear need for statistics based on the country of birth. 2. There are a large number of governmental and non-governmental actors involved at all levels – from the EU to the Federal, Länder and local governments. Germany is currently in the process of a major restructuring of its complex integration framework. Under the new Immigration Act which came into force on 1 January 2005, there is a uniform introduction programme for all permanent immigrants. As in the past, integration services focus largely on language training. There is little evaluation with respect to the effectiveness of this kind of training and it is generally not linked to labour market needs. Indeed, the scarce empirical evidence suggests that language training in Germany may …