Reshaping conceptions of citizenship? German Business sector engagement and refugee integration

ABSTRACT

In a global climate where refugees are increasingly seen as a threat to national security, the business sector has become a key actor at the forefront of engagement with refugee populations. A pertinent example is the case of Germany. When German chancellor Angela Merkel opened borders for refugees in the summer of 2015, many German companies regarded her move as a welcome way to overcome labour shortages and future demographic bottle-necks. In turn, business leaders became key actors in the development of integration policies. This paper discusses if business sector engagement with refugee integration in Germany through the Wir Zusammen [We Together] initiative has resulted in altered conceptions of citizenship as practiced in everyday encounters. Focusing on business engagement through providing apprenticeships or other work opportunities, the paper demonstrates that the business sector can indeed play an important role in transforming refugee lives more broadly, beyond labour market participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• business sector
• refugees
• integration
• Germany

Acknowledgments

I thank all research participants for sharing their stories and insights. Finally, I thank two anonymous referees for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The term refugee crisis is misleading in two important ways: Firstly, the ‘crisis’ does not refer, as one might expect, to the crises that made people flee their country of origin; secondly, it (wrongly) implies the mere presence of these refugees presents a major and unprecedented crisis (for further discussion see Bojadžijev 2018). In addition, actual numbers of refugees who entered Germany in 2015 are often exaggerated in public discourse and media reporting. Taken together, since 1953, 5.8 million people requested asylum in Germany, out of these 4.8 million did so since 1990. Peak years here were 1992 (438.191 people requesting asylum), 2015 (476.649 people) and 2016 (745.545 people). In 2017 this had been reduced to 222.683 people, and 2018 to 185.853 people. Post-2015 asylum applications were dominated by Syrians (around 30% in most years, followed by people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran but also Kosovo and Albania and a variety of other nationalities (Eritrea, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Russian Federation among others). These figures include follow-up applications of those who were rejected in the first instance with the right to appeal. Rejection rates in 2016 stood at almost 38%, in 2017 at almost 57% and in 2018 at 65%. At the time of writing the figures for 2019 were around 63% (all data and additional information like breakdown of figures according to nationality, ethnicity or religion can be found at Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (BAMF), www.bamf.de).

2. More generally, the declaratory character of the refugee definition provides additional justification for the use of the term: ‘The refugee definition is declaratory, i.e. a person is a refugee as soon as s/he fulfils the criteria contained in the definition. This would necessarily occur prior to a formal determination of her/his refugee status. Until such determination is made it must be assumed that those who have crossed an international border to escape a risk of serious harm in their country of origin are refugees and should be treated as such.’ (https://emergency.unhcr.org/entry/55772/refugee-definition:)

3. It should be noted here that integration policies were initially not developed with refugees in mind but rather labour migrants who had been recruited on what were perceived as temporary stays to the German labour market, the so-called Gastarbeiter (guest-workers), who often opted to stay in Germany (for a detailed discussion of the historical dimensions of different refugee and migrant movements into Germany post WWII and how these relate to migration, assimilation and integration policies see Brock and Macdonald 2019; for an example of how these policies related to ‘guest-workers’ see Hunn 2005).

4. One of the most prominent initiatives here is Bleiberecht durch Arbeit (Leave to remain through work) started in Southern Germany, where rejected asylum seekers with subsidiary status who have permanent employment and are well-integrated are still often deported (as the law on subsidiary status in principle allows), even though since January 2020 a new law should make this harder in theory, if not always in practice, see https://www.unternehmer-initiative.com/

5. At its foundation Wir Zusammen aimed to have 1000 members eventually, but this proved over-optimistic. In the end, 234 businesses joined the network (conversation with Wir Zusammen spokesperson, Hamburg, 30 May 2017; see also www.wir-zusammen.de).

6. This is ideally level C1, a quite comprehensive knowledge of German, but refugees who have acquired D2 are sometimes also accepted (for an overview of German language certificates see: http://www.europaeischer-referenzrahmen.de/)

7. Depending on profession and sector, apprenticeship salaries on average vary from Euros 300 to 900 per month. Traditionally, apprenticeships mainly target German youth from the age of 15 who often still live with their parents, thus older apprentices and those who need to pay for accommodation, can get additional funding for the latter. A number of refugee-apprentices who took part in this research still lived in refugee accommodation paid for by the state.

8. The following is based on an interview with Marwan in Berlin, 29 January 2019. All names have been changed for reasons of confidentiality.

9. The following is based on an interview with Abdul in Berlin, 29 January 2019.

10. Whether a refugee can actually work is connected to their title of stay: Recognised refugees can work and have the same rights as German employees. If a refugee is still in the asylum application or decision process, or rejected but ‘geduldet’ (which means they are not sent back for now for a variety of reasons), the immigration office (Ausländerbehörde) and the employment office (Arbeitsagentur) have to give their OK. There are exceptions for professionals in fields with a shortage but the situation is rather murky and different in different federal entities. In addition, there is in theory a federal law that allows those who have secured an apprenticeship to finish that and work for two years after, even if they were rejected or come from a so-called safe country of origin. Sicherer Herkunftsstaat (safe country of origin) is a legal term in German asylum legislation. It refers to countries were state persecution is not the rule – thus is a quite elastic phrase that has e.g. been applied to parts of Afghanistan (for more details see:http://www.bamf.de/EN/Fluechtlingsschutz/Sonderverfahren/SichereHerkunftsstaaten/sichere-herkunftsstaaten-node.html).

Additional information

Funding

This project was made possible through funding from the British Academy (Reference: SRG18R1\181371) that I gratefully acknowledge.

Notes on contributors

Tanja R. Müller

Tanja R. Müller is Professor of Political Sociology at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. She has published on refugee rights and conceptions of citizenship in leading journals and is the Principal Investigator of an ESRC-funded project on Transnational Lived Citizenship among diaspora populations in the Horn of Africa (2020-2023).