Germany is integrating its refugees

By THE DATA TEAM

“WE CAN manage this” declared Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, in 2015, as thousands of asylum seekers made their way towards Europe. Germany’s borders stayed open and some 900,000 people arrived that year. Many predicted social chaos and Mrs Merkel’s downfall. Her apparent cruise to victory at the election on September 24th is a testament to two factors. First, thanks largely to a repatriation deal with Turkey, the numbers arriving fell to 200,000 last year and just 80,000 so far this year. Second, and more happily, despite the strains most of the refugees are on the path to integration.

The first important step, educating refugee children, is going well. They are usually attending school within three weeks of their arrival. Several teenagers at Rudower 18, a hostel in Berlin, attend the nearby Anne Frank School, where Dagmar Breske, a teacher, has devised a three-stage programme. In a class for illiterates, three Afghan boys haltingly read out lists of words beginning with the letter “A”. In another, seven teenagers—mostly Syrians and Iraqis—are practising multiplication.

Getting adults into work is harder. Only those granted asylum can take jobs. Once they have submitted their applications, those with good prospects (like many Syrians) take a compulsory integration course: 600 hours of German lessons and 100 hours of civics. Many refugees have had little education and progress towards work can take time. Friedrich Kiesinger, a psychologist at Albatros, a charity, blames the obsession with formal language qualifications: “The best way to learn German is to get a job.”

Of course it will be many years before Germany can fully assess how well it has integrated its newcomers. But it is already clear that the gloomiest predictions were wrong. Germany has taken in more than 1.2m people over the past two years, and coped. There is much more to do. But for now, it seems to be managing.

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