The Role of Local Authorities in the Integration of Migrants - Integrating refugees and Asylum Seekers in Local Labour Markets: To what extent are federal states’ prerequisites accounted for in the initial national allocation mechanism of asylum seekers and refugees?

Abstract

In 2015 and 2016, Germany experienced the highest influx of persons seeking asylum in its history. The scale of arrivals alone, alongside a high likelihood of longitude of stay of newly arrived, necessitates efforts to integrate these persons into societies. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of the key area labour market integration of asylum seekers and refugees in the cross-cutting policy area ‘integration’. In the multi-level governance scheme of the Federal Republic of Germany, its federal states, the Bundesländer, are identified as key actors in service provisions to asylum seekers and refugees. In the last years, they reported divergent experiences in persecution of this task, agitated by varying numbers in reception in line with the national allocation mechanism. Against this background, the analysis provides a first research design for a possible adjustment of the national dispersal mechanism, which takes into account divergent prerequisites of Bundesländer in the policy area labour market integration. The aim is to understand the limitations and potentials of the current approach in order to develop fact-based recommendations for alternative approaches. The analysis identifies both quantitative and qualitative local conditions as explanatory factors: In a first step, quantitative local economic key variables are comparatively assessed. A second qualitative pillar analyses the impact of clever designed policy frameworks of Bundesländer on successful labour market integration of the group. A key finding of this paper is, that federal states’ economic pre-conditions alone are not able to fully explain their performances in economic integration. In turn, clever designed policy approaches can substantially complement access of asylum seekers and refugees in labour markets.