Andreas Ette; Nils Witte

Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerungsforschung

More than 1.2 million Ukrainians are currently seeking protection in Germany. Compared with refugees from other countries, Ukrainians benefit from a relatively liberal protection regime under the European Temporary Protection Directive. In Germany, they have been granted immediate labour market access alongside early investments in their human capital through integration and language courses. To assess the effectiveness of this “language-first” approach, this paper examines the labour market integration of Ukrainian refugees, emphasizing the impact of early-stage human capital investments following their arrival.

Previous research on refugees from other origins and countries suggests mixed outcomes. On the one hand, early participation in structured language and integration courses may delay refugees’ entry into the labour market by locking them into prolonged training programmes and raising their reservation wages. On the other hand, timely participation in such courses could improve refugees’ subsequent employment quality.

Drawing on the first six waves of the IAB-BiB/FReDA-BAMF-SOEP survey on Ukrainian refugees and using panel regression models, this paper analyses both short- and medium-term effects of language course participation using variation in the duration of language course attendance. It distinguishes between two indicators of labour market integration: access to employment and employment quality.

Preliminary findings indicate heterogeneous effects based on gender, presence of children in the household, and refugees’ pre-existing skills. The paper contributes by analysing consequences of language-first approaches under conditions of a liberal protection regime. It shows whether and for whom timely human capital investments are most effective in promoting sustainable labour market outcomes.

Marlene Bauer; Irena Kogan

Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim

This study examines differences in partnership biographies between young male refugees from Syria and Afghanistan in Germany and young men from the German resident population, both with and without a migration background. Compared to earlier research, this study focuses not only on current partnerships but also on partnership histories, distinguishing among casual, committed, and marital relationships. In addition to the prevalence of these partnership forms, we also examine the extent of ethnic endogamy within them. We employ data from wave 1 of PARFORM, collected in 2022-2023 among male refugee migrants in Germany, and wave 9 of CILS4EU-DE, collected in 2022 among the German resident population. Preliminary findings indicate that Syrian and Afghan refugees are significantly more likely than members of the resident population to report no non-marital partnerships since arriving in Germany. Refugees are also significantly more likely to be married than members of the German resident population, but do not differ in this regard from ethnic minorities with family origins in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa (MENA+) region. With regard to different types of non-marital partnerships, the findings indicate that refugees are significantly more likely to engage in relationships characterized by low levels of commitment. In contrast, men from the German resident population are more frequently involved in stable, committed non-marital partnerships. Notably, while Syrian and Afghan refugees often report that most of their non-marital partners were of German origin, the vast majority of their marital partners are co-ethnic women

Carlos Palomo Lario; Jana Kuhlemann; Irena Kogan

Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim

This study investigates how opportunity structures influence partnership outcomes among young male asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan who arrived in Germany between 2014 and 2018. Most of these men, aged 18 to 34, arrived without family and entered environments with relatively small co-ethnic communities, complicating the formation of partnerships within their national ingroup during a typical life stage for relationship formation. Drawing on theories of homophily and homogamy, as well as Blau’s structural theory and Feld’s theory of focused social interaction, the paper explores how structural conditions affect the likelihood of forming homogamous partnerships—those within the same national, religious, or linguistic group. While prior research often analyzes opportunity structures at broad geographic levels, this study focuses on micro-level foci—neighbourhood, work/study, online communications, and leisure activities—ranked by their constraining capacity, or the extent to which they structure regular social interaction. Using panel survey data from the PARFORM study (N = 3,412), the analysis examines the self-reported share of co-nationals within each focus and its association with partnership exogamy. The study asks whether greater in-group presence correlates with a lower likelihood of exogamous partnerships and whether this relationship is stronger in more constraining social contexts. By incorporating longitudinal data and a fine-grained conceptualization of social foci, this research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how structural opportunities shape partnership patterns among recent refugees, addressing key limitations in the existing literature on immigrant integration and social behavior.

Trang Nguyen

Max Weber Kolleg, Erfurt University, Germany

This paper examines the quotidian realities of undocumented Vietnamese men who are involved in the illicit cigarette trade on the streets of former East Berlin. Dominant public discourses perpetuated by media and law enforcement have persistently cast these migrants as either criminal agents of organized crime or victims of human trafficking. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I provide an alternative analytic that foregrounds the interplay between illegality, labor, and migrant aspiration. Rather than reducing these migrants to passive objects of crime control or humanitarian concern, I explore how their participation in the street illegal economy constitutes a mode of social incorporation – at once subversive and generative.

Their trade in illicit cigarettes emerges not simply as a deviant aberration, nor merely as a prompt reaction to structural exclusion from formal labor markets and legal pathways to residency. Their engagement in street vending of cigarettes reflects an agentive pursuit of autonomy, dignity, and belonging within the everyday life of former East Berlin’s neighborhoods – paradoxically enabling a certain degree of social integration through illegality.

In attending to how these undocumented men navigate, exploit, and contest the boundaries of legality, this paper raises questions about conventional policy frameworks wherein the criminalization and exclusion of irregular migrants are presumed to enforce a normative social order, and “integration” is narrowly conceived as a linear outcome of formal labor market participation.