Joint research project launched: IAB-BiB/FReDA-BAMF-SOEP survey of 6,000 refugees from Ukraine

Report of August 29, 2022

More than 950,000 refugees from Ukraine have sought protection in Germany since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. The project “Refugees from Ukraine in Germany” is the first comprehensive, representative social science survey of this group. It is being conducted by the SOEP in partnership with the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) of the Federal Employment Agency (BA), the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), the Family Research and Demo-graphic Analysis (FReDA) project, and the Research Center of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF-FZ).

Many Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion have sought protection in neighboring countries and nearby EU states. This is in part for reasons of geographical proximity, but also because EU countries offer refugees from Ukraine visa-free entry and temporary residency without having to apply for asylum. Many of the refugees who have recently arrived from Ukraine—most of them women, children, and the elderly—have relatives or friends in Germany who they can turn to for help. Due to these unique conditions, findings on previous waves of refugee migration are only partly applicable to the present situation. The study seeks to close this research gap by creating the first representative database on refugees from Ukraine, on the conditions that led them to flee, and on their integration into German society. The findings drawn from these data will lay the foundation for groundbreaking policy research and political decision-making.

Survey of 6,000 Ukrainian nationals

To generate the random sample for this survey, 100 municipalities in which large numbers of Ukrainian refugees are registered were identified using Germany’s Central Register of Foreigners. Then, based on data from population registers, Ukrainian refugees within these municipalities were selected randomly and contacted with the request to participate in the survey. The Institute for Applied Social Sciences (infas) is conducting the survey using an online questionnaire, but also of-fers respondents the option of completing the questionnaire on paper. In first phase of the pro-ject, two waves of interviews with approximately 6,000 Ukrainian refugees between the ages of 18 and 70 are planned (August 2022 and January 2023).

The study builds on the “IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees,” which has been running since 2016, and the Family Research and Demographic Analysis (FReDA) project, which is also based at the BiB. The project partners plan to present findings from the first wave of the survey at the end of 2022. Researchers who are interested in analyzing the survey data will be able to obtain them from the SOEP Research Data Center (RDC SOEP), IAB, and FReDA.

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