What Canada can learn from Germany’s mass, unplanned migration

By Sadiya Ansari || February 2, 2021

When Sami Shmayess was visiting his parents in his hometown of Latakia, Syria, in 2008, he met a German family who were on a year-long trip in their van. Long stretches of beach on the Mediterranean coast made the port city a popular holiday destination, and it was on a walk by the water where Shmayess’s parents spotted the Germans and invited them over for dinner and a hot shower. Shmayess quickly became friends with them. Eight years later, it was their turn to invite Shmayess to stay with them in Görlitz, a small city in the eastern part of Germany. But the circumstances of his travel were quite different—and likely permanent.

In 2015, as the civil war in Syria stretched into its fifth year, Shmayess decided to leave. “I had to give up everything and start over,” he tells me on a fall afternoon, sitting in the restaurant he and his wife had opened in Görlitz’s city centre just over a week earlier. Now 38, Shmayess is soft-spoken with bright brown eyes behind square glasses, maintaining calm in his voice even as he describes the most difficult decision he will likely make in his life.

“I didn’t want to spend the next [few] years fleeing from one place to another,” says Shmayess. That’s why he chose Germany—Chancellor Angela Merkel had just opened the borders, it was booming economically and his skills as an IT specialist were in high demand. He began learning German five days after arriving, found a job in his field within six months, and after a year, brought his wife, Etab Ammar, over.

Germany’s economy and sustained support from civil society are just two of the factors that helped the country manage the arrival of over one million asylum seekers between 2014 and 2016, the largest number the country has seen since the end of the Second World War. Ramping up its capacity to process asylum claims and increasing access to language and integration courses were also important to Germany’s success. Some Germans had especially high hopes that newcomers would counteract the country’s low birth rate, which, similar to Canada’s, poses the dual threat of labour shortages and an inability to fund growing social security costs. In 2015, Dieter Zetsche, then-head of Daimler, went as far as to propose that refugees may be “Germany’s next economic miracle.”

But not everyone in Germany was optimistic about mass migration. Many warned that the influx would create a crisis in the form of dependence on welfare and long-term poverty as migrants got stuck in precarious jobs.

The federal Institute for Employment Research (IAB) examined the claim that the migration would “overstrain” the capacity of both the German economy and society. “The empirical evidence has—contrary to the expectations—given no indications that the influx of refugees in 2015 led to a ‘refugee crisis’ in Germany,” reads the 2020 study, published in the journal Soziale Welt. Looking at a detailed survey of a representative group of refugees who arrived between 2013 and 2016, the authors found that the demographic profile—69 per cent were under 35—was “likely to facilitate, rather than hinder, labour market integration.”

A separate report by the IAB based on the same survey of refugees found that within five years of arriving, half of asylum seekers were employed, and by the end of 2018, 23 per cent had enrolled in education or training opportunities and 57 per cent were working in skilled professions. This is remarkable, considering that in 2017, Aydan Özoğuz, Germany’s commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, predicted up to three-quarters of refugees would still be unemployed in five years. It’s also impressive given not only the barriers immigrants face, but also that this was a high-needs population that didn’t plan or prepare for such a move—only one per cent of those surveyed who arrived between 2013 and 2016 spoke German.

The perception that “too much” immigration will strain a country’s ability to absorb migrants is certainly not unique to Germany. Canada is seen as managing this concern through its focus on economic migration. Part of why the Canadian system is lauded internationally is that it primarily targets economic migrants, who are hand-picked based on a points system that assesses applicants according to their language abilities, education level and work experience.

The underlying assumption of the points system is that it eases the transition into Canada, and particularly into the labour market. And yet, Canada has an underemployment problem. A 2020 report from Public Policy Forum, for instance, notes that immigrants are overrepresented in lower-paying jobs, such as those in accommodation and food services “where the average pay is $383 per week compared to $976 per week across all industries.” Unrecognized foreign credentials, devalued work experience and individual discrimination all contribute to this.

But what about those who arrive under different circumstances, who are admitted based on what they need, rather than how they might benefit a country’s GDP? Refugees are a small proportion of those that Canada takes in, and the economic integration of this group is understudied. Germany—which also carefully targets economic migrants (2015’s open border policy was an aberration)—offers a window into what can happen when a wealthy Western country undergoes a mass migration without assessing the migrants’ potential for the labour market.

The last decade has shown that the number of people migrating is growing. Globally, there were 79.5 million people forcibly displaced at the end of 2019. War, famine and persecution are among the reasons behind this movement. More than 13 million have fled their homes in Syria since 2011. And climate change will certainly be a factor—it could force 143 million from their home countries in South Asia, Latin America and Africa by 2050, according to a 2018 World Bank report.

In a world where migration, especially unplanned movement, is on the rise, what lessons can countries like Canada draw from what went well—and what didn’t—in the German case?

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Görlitz sits on Germany’s border with Poland, the Neisse river separating the two countries. It’s home to 55,000, with cobblestone streets, centuries-old churches and charming heritage buildings—4,000 of them—the result of being one of the few cities that wasn’t blown apart in the Second World War. If it sounds quintessentially European, it’s because Hollywood has imprinted this image in North Americans’ minds; films like The Reader, Inglourious Basterds and The Grand Budapest Hotel were all shot here. It has advantages over a big city in appealing to young families looking for a place to settle down: less congestion, better and cheaper housing options and more green space. But the city has challenges, too: the loss of a quarter of its population since reunification, a high unemployment rate and one of the country’s highest rates of support for anti-immigrant political party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Despite the city’s high unemployment rate, there is still a need to attract workers. In the early ’90s, industry collapsed in eastern Germany as a result of the fall of the socialist regime. “Everyone was oriented westwards,” says Eva Wittig, head of marketing at a city-owned organization. Mass migration out of the east continues, she adds, with parents and grandparents still encouraging young people to leave, leading to a hollowing out of the labour market.

Malek Alnajem is exactly the kind of person the city wants to attract, arriving in Görlitz at age 34 from Homs, Syria, with his wife, eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old son. But unlike Shmayess, Alnajem didn’t choose this city. Since the 1970s, the federal government has had a system called Königsteiner Schlüssel, which assigns asylum seekers to each state in proportion to their populations, and the states further assign asylum seekers to regions and municipalities. Görlitz received 1,200 asylum seekers in 2015 as a result. While Canada has a similar system of assigning government-assisted refugees, it’s far less stringent.

Alnajem was nervous when he was assigned to Görlitz because he heard it was home to “many Nazis” as part of the former East Germany, which historically had a dearth of in-bound migration. What has kept him there is a training program with the local Red Cross to become certified as a child care worker and educator.

In Syria, Alnajem worked as a gym teacher for 14 years, but in Germany his diploma wasn’t recognized. He was advised by a career counsellor that he would have to go back to school for eight years in order to earn equivalent qualifications. Alnajem’s counsellor tapped a personal connection to help him secure a spot in the Red Cross program, which guarantees him a small income; now, he’s set to finish in 2023. Three days a week he works at a daycare centre with school-aged children, and the other two days he attends classes.

The dual vocational program is one of 330 in the country. The system pays trainees—908 euros a month on average—and combines in-class experience in a publicly funded institution with apprenticeships. Training typically takes two to 3½ years. Unlike in Canada, where professions are regulated at the provincial level, these programs are standardized across the country, providing national recognition.

Alnajem’s eventual qualification as a child care worker lands him in one of the most in-demand careers in Germany. But he would much rather be teaching at school. “I’m doing [this] out of necessity,” says Alnajem.

READ: Canada’s uncomfortable reliance on migrant workers

Etab Ammar also trained as a teacher in Syria, but she hasn’t been able to qualify as one in Germany. “Although it is the same [profession], it is very different here,” she says. “I had a hope to continue, but not anymore.” A tough pregnancy and the birth of her son Andreas in 2017 meant Ammar wasn’t able to keep up with the requisite language and integration courses to retrain as a teacher in Germany.

Unfortunately, Ammar’s experience is common among women who arrive in Germany as mothers to preschool children. An IAB study found that, compared to men, women “enter their first job in German significantly more slowly.” There is a lag in language acquisition, which then turns into a lag in finding work, one notable enough that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the IAB have both flagged it as a structural issue that needs to be addressed.

Similar to Canada, Germany’s poor recognition of foreign credentials is known to create major obstacles for people like Alnajem and Ammar. “The research shows occupational recognition is very important for labour market success—it increases the probability of job entry, and increases wages significantly,” says Yuliya Kosyakova, a senior researcher specializing in migration at the IAB. Germany has invested to rectify this problem, resulting in a growing number of qualifications being recognized in the last few years, especially in medical fields.

But there remains the problem of experience not being recognized. This is evident in occupations that are part of Germany’s dual vocational system, particularly where formal certification is required for jobs like housekeeper, tailor or gardener. This system “barely exists” anywhere else, says Kosyakova, which means it’s hard to prove equivalent credentials.

Ultimately, the system “makes it really difficult to enter many jobs,” says Kosyakova. As a new immigrant, and especially as a refugee, spending two to three years forgoing a full-time income after doing months of language classes is a tough choice to make. For many, this situation is a barrier to applying their skills in the German labour market.

One of the challenges both for migrants and governments in evolving economies is matching labour market needs to qualifications. That’s what one federally funded pilot project in Nuremberg aimed to do—provide focused, individual help to mid-career refugees to find positions matching their skills and experience. The project, called Enter, ran from the beginning of 2016 to the end of 2018, working with 50 refugees and 10 companies and eventually placing 31 people in jobs. Project managers first sat with refugees to understand their experience, education and hopes for the future. Then they helped in many ways, including calling up potential employers to help the refugee learn what the job would be like and introducing the candidate to the employer.

“That was very good, actually, because we found out whether there are companies that are not really open-minded for foreign employees,” said Marion Bradl, who designed and ran the project. She sees the pilot as a success, and says one thing is clear: “The more support and contact the refugees had to German society, the more successful their integration.”

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Sitting outside a shisha café on a warm autumn evening, Ramadan Alzaher tells me about settling in Berlin, arriving from Syria via Turkey. He came in 2015 at age 23, alone. But he had a bit of a network in the city—a friend’s address to hand to a taxi driver after making the long journey by boat and train, and another friend to share an apartment. He was even able to train for a new career as a lifeguard with five other refugees who also spoke Arabic.

Berlin is seen as a haven for immigrants. As an extremely diverse city of 3.6 million, it often offers a built-in community and the chance to speak your language and eat familiar food while trying to adjust to a new culture. And yet, research on the benefits of immigrants having an ethnic network is mixed. Kosyakova and Klarita Gërxhani at the IAB examined labour market outcomes for those arriving in Germany between 2009 and 2013, and found that if a migrant used their network to find work, it helped them land a job faster (though having a network alone was not enough). At the same time, it didn’t improve the quality of jobs held by respondents, which was measured by hourly wage.

Diversifying the network you rely on can help. And one way to do that is through “integration mentors,” says Michael Haas-Busch from Caritas Berlin, a national social service organization of the Catholic Church.

Integration mentors are both paid and voluntary, and provide the kind of one-on-one assistance that social service agencies can’t: accompanying people to appointments with various authorities, helping them apply for school and connecting them to jobs. “Through these people, refugees have access to society—they get to know people, they have a network, they can get support for housing,” says Haas-Busch, who coordinates volunteers for this kind of work among 20 or so parishes in Berlin.