Can refugees save Europe?
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‘Open door’ Germany eager to boost workforce but finds integrating newcomers no easy task
Facing a critical demographic deficit, Germany could be saved by the millions of asylum seekers that are swirling across Europe – and the federal government in Berlin is certainly striving to make that happen.
But despite its deep pockets, accepting refugees and, more importantly, putting them in the workforce, is proving to be no picnic.
Authorities still have a long way to go to achieve a genuine melting pot, as getting the refugees to master the German language and habituating them into society is a tricky job, not to mention the recent series of terrorist attacks on German soil that is adding fuel to the fire.
Like many in Europe, Germany’s population has been ageing for the past decade.
According to Stephan Sievert, an expert at the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, demographic change results from factors such as birth rate, death rate and the movement of migrants.
For Germany, the birth rate has continued to be eight or nine babies per 1,000 women since the late 1990s to early 2010s – an alarming setback.
In the 1960s, the number was 17, almost double today’s figure, according to World Bank data.
Because of the low fertility and mortality rates, most European countries, including Germany, are ageing and maybe even shrinking in terms of population, Sievert said.
The trend now is that from 2025 to 2050, people aged between 55 and 69 will make up the biggest share in the country’s demographic composition, the expert added.
What’s worrisome about an ageing society is that it can damage the economy. Germany is currently the biggest economy in Europe, but if it fails to feed the workforce market, that status could be threatened, he explained.
However, the situation is not completely hopeless, in his view. Despite Europe’s demographic decline in recent years, most countries have also witnessed a growing share of immigrants, thus boosting their populations again.
Thanks to its healthy economy, Sievert said Germany could count on immigration from within the European Union, as many people move around the continent because of the welfare gap within it.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of EU migrants migrate to Germany, as the EU grants the right to freedom of movement across the 28 member states, he said.
However, these migrants cannot be the sole source of salvation for Germany, as half of them have no vocational qualifications and also often tend to move on to other countries depending on the economic circumstances, he added.
As a consequence, when the millions of asylum seekers from the Middle East, Africa and Asia began to hit Europe, Germany saw an opportunity in the influx – or the so-called “immigration crisis”.
Taking in the refugees can be one of the solutions to Germany’s demographic shortfall, Sievert said, hence the federal government accepted hundreds of thousands last year, hoping to boost the shrinking labour market.
Germany is one of the popular destinations for asylum seekers from war-torn countries in the Middle East, such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Adopting an open-door policy, last year the country received more than half a million applications for asylum and was willing to take in as many as 1.5 million, trying to inject these people into the deteriorating demographic figures.
Undoubtedly, the federal government has the capacity, at least financially, to foster the refugees, but placing them in society – to be part of it, to settle down and to have a job in Germany – without a hitch is a different story.
A top official in the government’s division for integration admitted that concern and dissatisfaction had increased among Germans over migrant issues.
The source said people had four fears in regard to the refugees, but they could be overcome with the correct understanding.
“Their fears of the migrants are of terror, of Islamisation, of losing wealth, and of losing control,” the source elaborated.
However, the integration-authority official said that though these fears could be par for the course, statistics had shown they were unfounded.
This notion was confirmed by Fabio Ghelli, expert at the Mediendienst Integration information centre, who said that criminal activity in Germany was related more to gender and age rather than religion and nationality.
Statistics have shown that those committing crimes such as robbery or physical and sexual assault are more likely to be male and in their teens or early twenties, rather than Muslim or non-German, Ghelli said.
The extent to which reassuring words such as these can do the trick is unclear, however. For example, in some cities such as Dresden, capital of the eastern state of Saxony, the anti-Islam and anti-migration group Pegida is actively moving against the government effort to adopt the refugees.
To make matters worse, in recent weeks, the country has suffered several incidents inflicting more horror on Germans.
One such was a suicide-bomb attack by a failed Syrian asylum seeker on July 24, in which 15 people were injured.
Another took place in Munich on July 22, in which the shooter also had a migrant background, being of Iranian descent.
Language a major obstacle
In addition, besides the deep fear and maybe distrust among the host population, language is another can of worms.
According to sources familiar with the migrants, refugees are encouraged by the authorities to take German-language classes, as everyone agrees that having a grasp of the language is key to further integration.
Every kid, regardless of their legal status, is by law obliged to go to school, said schoolteacher Friedericke Terhechte-Memeroglu, who has more than 30 years’ experience with refugee children.
Despite the effort, picking up a new language is still arduous, especially when the teaching and learning parties do not have a common middle language in which they can operate.
Most refugees do not speak English and have only their mother tongue to rely on.
“We have a welcome class for the migrant children. Each class has no more than 10 pupils. But the student faces keep changing, because the families sometimes have to relocate in line with federal regulations,” Terhechte-Memeroglu said.
“We use German with them. Most of them do not speak English. And oftentimes, the students are of different nationalities, speaking different languages. So, the situation is rather difficult,” she explained.
“What’s more, most teaching-staff members responsible for the refugee pupils are not professional teachers, but trainees. We wish we could do more, but the teachers in our normal classes are also reluctant to take in these students because it is difficult for the whole class,” she added.
The teacher stressed that it was not that the indigenous students or the teachers were xenophobic or discriminating against the foreign students, but that it was just awkward to have them in the class and not know what to do for them.
Social worker Suada Dolovac, who has worked in a private shelter for refugees for more than 15 years, also said that language proficiency was the most important factor that would determine a migrant’s fate on German soil.
She also agreed that it was hard work for both teachers and young students in German classes for migrants, but said that was nothing in comparison with what the adult migrants had to encounter.
“This is such an unfortunate vicious circle. The adult refugees have to work to support themselves here. But the only jobs they can do are laborious ones such as cleaning the restrooms. And that kind of job just doesn’t help with the improvement of their language skills. They are just stuck with it,” she explained.
Dolovac acknowledged the government’s hard work, effort and resources put into the immigration and integration programme.
However, she said it had always been about the programme and the system “in the big picture”, and that what looked good on paper, may not be good for the people in practice.
“It seems everything is all about numbers. They set the number of days and months that the newcomers can stay at the shelter, before they keep moving on and have to face the real world almost on their own. But, you know, the same figures cannot work for everyone,” she added.
Though it seems that immigration and integration is a difficult double act to achieve, Germany in fact has long been a country of mixed race and various religions.
Many authorities said that about 20 per cent of the German population had a migrant background, with many of them of Turkish or Iranian descent, in particular.
Many Turks have fled to and settled down in Germany since times of war, while many Iranians came in the late 1990s, after the revolution in their country.
However, although most of these people have integrated extensively into German society as they settled down and managed to start new lives, it still cannot be said that Germany is a melting pot.
A sense of ‘not belonging’
A German-born Iranian who works at a refugee shelter offered the view that most of the “German nationals” who do not look European, hardly feel that they really belong in the country.
“We could be born and raised here in Germany and speak the language perfectly, but people would still look at us as though we were foreigners,” she said.
“It’s not like in the US. You may look completely Chinese and people would still take you as an American if you were born and raised there and speak English,” she explained.
She said that when watching a football match, friends of hers who are German-born Turks never root for the German team.
“They say: ‘If they don’t think I’m German, then I don’t have to root for them. I want the Germans to lose the game’,” she added.
Moreover, the sense of not belonging goes so far that some of them even consider giving up their German nationality, she suggested.
“One of my friends who is Turkish said that he might go back to Turkey, though he does not know the language or anything all [about the country], because he feels he will be more appreciated there,” the shelter worker said.
The woman also said that legislation was needed for immigration and integration to be successful.
In fact, the federal government passed such a law in 2004, which she said was a good start but one that had come a bit late in the game, considering that Germany’s influx of refugees started half a century ago.
