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IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees in Germany

Current Project

Project Management

Herbert Brücker and Yuliya Kosyakova (IAB), Nina Rother (BAMF), Sabine Zinn (SOEP)

Project Period

July 1, 2016 - December 31, 2025

In Cooperation With

Institute for Employment Research (IAB) of the German Federal Employment Agency (BA)
Research Centre on Migration, Integration, and Asylum of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF-FZ)

The Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), and the Research Centre on Migration, Integration, and Asylum of the Federal Office of Migration and Refugees (BAMF-FZ) are working together on a project to survey people seeking protection in Germany from political persecution and violent conflicts. The influx of refugees to Germany, which rose sharply in the second half of 2015, poses challenges for public policy, government administration, and the population at large. To effectively coordinate lodging and assistance for these refugees and to foster their long-term integration into the labor market, educational system, and other societal spheres, robust and reliable information is needed that can be generalized and applied usefully to the challenges at hand. It is up to the empirical social research to provide a data base for these purposes.

DIW Team

Description of the project

The sample

To meet this need, the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) of the Federal Employment Agency, Research Centre on Migration, Integration, and Asylum of the Federal Office of Migration and Refugees (BAMF-FZ), and the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at DIW Berlin are conducting a comprehensive standardized survey of refugees in Germany based on a qualitative preliminary study. Participation in the survey is voluntary, and the survey is being conducted by specially trained interviewers from the survey institute commissioned to do the fieldwork, TNS Sozialforschung in Munich. Conceptualized as a longitudinal study, the survey will be carried out in 2016, 2017, and 2018. In the first wave of the survey in 2016, the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Refugee Sample covers nearly 2,000 adult refugees who arrived in Germany since 2013 seeking asylum. At the end of 2016, an initial report has been compiled, and in 2017, the anonymized data will be released to the scientific community for research purposes. In the first wave in 2016 we surveyed 4,817 adult respondents in 3,538 households. Moreover, parents provided proxy information on 5,728 children living in the interviewed households. In 2017, a boost sample of about 1,250 refugee households registered between February and December 2016 will be added.

Questions about refugees’ living situations and the overall framework conditions

The study looks at the living situations of refugees as well as their schooling, vocational training, and current occupational situations. It also collects information on refugees’ language use, living situations, family situations, social participation, and contact with both Germans and people of their own ethnic backgrounds. Other focal points of the study, which is conducted using standardized survey instruments, are the impacts of the legal and institutional frameworks for refugees and the effectiveness of various support programs.

More information about the data on our websites of the RDC SOEP.

Connection with the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample, the Socio-Economic Panel, and the IAB’s Integrated Employment Biographies Sample

The study and selection of questions in the survey closely follows that of the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample, which is a cooperation project between IAB and the SOEP group at DIW Berlin. Launched in 2013, the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample was also designed as a longitudinal study. As is the case with the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample, the data from the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Refugee Survey will become part of the data provided by the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Every year since 1984, several thousand people have taken part in the SOEP study. Currently, the SOEP study has around 30,000 respondents in around 15,000 households. These data provide a basis for comparison with other groups of immigrants to Germany as well as with individuals without a background of immigration. Data from the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Refugee Survey will ultimately be linked to data from the IAB’s Integrated Employment Biographies Sample conditional on respondents’ consent. This will make it possible to trace the occupational biographies of refugees in Germany precisely.

More information on the data on our websites of the RDC SOEP.

Revision of the Dataset (Notice December 2017)

The Institute of Employment Research (IAB), the Information Centre for Asylum and Migration of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF-FZ), and the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) are currently working together on a longitudinal survey of refugees. The survey research institute Kantar Public (formerly TNS Infratest) has been commissioned to carry out the interviews. Kantar Public performs routine checks to ensure the quality of the survey. In preparation for the next round of interviews, Kantar Public found that one interviewer had not conducted interviews according to the established procedures. Six percent of the total household interviews were affected... (read more)

Quality Control in the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees (Notice March 2019)

Following the identification of interviews that were not conducted In line with the standards of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP group in the first wave of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees in 2016 (see above), the project partners and the fieldwork institute substantially enhanced and reinforced their quality control and quality assurance processes. In addition to improvements in fieldwork monitoring  by the fieldwork institute and in standard procedures for monitoring statistical anomalies, a new procedure has been developed to identify statistical anomalies in interviewer data (Kosyakova et al., 2019, coming soon). Through the use of this new statistical procedure, three further suspected interviewers have been identified with statistical anomalies. All affected interviews have been deleted from the dataset (version v.34) prior to distribution ... (read more)

Publications of other project partners

2017

Fendel, Tanja and Yulija Kosyakova. 2017. Ökonomische und soziale Integration von Geflüchteten in Deutschland: Mögliche Lehren aus vergangenen Erfahrungen. In: Geographische Rundschau, 3, 30-37.

Brücker, Herbert, Andreas Hauptmann and Steffen Sirries. 2017. Arbeitsmarktintegration von Geflüchteten in Deutschland: Der Stand zum Jahresbeginn 2017. Aktuelle Berichte 4/2017. Nürnberg: Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB).

Brenzel, Hanna, Herbert Brücker, Tanja Fendel, Andreas Hauptmann, Philipp Jaschke and Yuliya Kosyakova. 2017. „Zur Integration von Geflüchteten“. IAB-Stellungnahme, 06/2017.

Kosyakova, Yuliya. 2017. „Frauen nach der Flucht“. Interview  im Fachmagazin IQ Konkret, Förderprogram Integration und Qualifizierung, gefördert durch Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales und Europäischen Sozialfond. Ausgabe 3/2017. Berlin.

Kosyakova, Yuliya and Steffen Sirries. 2017. Large-Scale Immigration and Labour Market Integration: First Lessons from the Recent Past in Germany. In: Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, 52 (5), 263-269.

Sirries, Steffen and Ehsan Vallizadeh. 2017. Arbeitsmarktintegration von Geflüchteten: Förderung ist notwendig und erfolgversprechend. In: Wirtschaftsdienst 97 (9), 676-678.

2018

Baier, Andreea and Axel Böhm. 2018. Mehr Gemeinsamkeiten als Unterschiede? Eine vergleichende Analyse politischer Einstellungen von Personen mit und ohne Fluchterfahrung in Deutschland. In: Institut für Demokratie und Zivilgesellschaft (IDZ) – Thüringer Dokumentations- und Forschungsstelle gegen Menschenfeindlichkeit (Hrsg.), Wissen schafft Demokratie 3/2018 - Gesellschaftlicher Zusammenhalt, 38-49. Jena: Institut für Demokratie und Zivilgesellschaft (IDZ). (http:/doi.org/10.19222/201803/04)

Baier, Andreea and Manuel Siegert. 2018. „Die Wohnsituation Geflüchteter“. Kurzanalysen des Forschungszentrums Migration, Integration und Asyl des Bundesamtes für Migration und Flüchtlinge 02/2018

Scheible, Jana A. 2018. „Alphabetisierung und Deutscherwerb von Geflüchteten: Deutschkenntnisse und Förderbedarfe von Erst- und Zweitschriftlernenden in Integrationskursen“. Kurzanalysen des Forschungszentrums Migration, Integration und Asyl des Bundesamtes für Migration und Flüchtlinge 01/2018

Wiedner, Jonas, Zerrin Salikutluk and Johannes Giesecke. 2018. „Die Arbeitsmarktintegration von Geflüchteten: Potenziale, Perspektiven und Herausforderungen.“ Flucht: Forschung und Transfer, State-of-Research-Papier 7. Institut für Migrationsforschung und Interkulturelle Studien (IMIS) der Universität Osnabrück und Internationales Konversionszentrum Bonn (BICC)

Wiedner, Jonas, Zerrin Salikutluk and Johannes Giesecke. 2018. „Arbeitsmarktintegration von Geflüchteten: Was tun?“ Flucht: Forschung und Transfer, Policy Brief 7. Institut für Migrationsforschung und Interkulturelle Studien (IMIS) der Universität Osnabrück und Internationales Konversionszentrum Bonn (BICC)

2019

De PaivaLareiro, Cristina. 2019. Ankommen im deutschen Bildungssystem. Bildungsbeteiligung von geflüchteten Kindern und Jugendlichen. Ausgabe 02|2019 der Kurzanalysen des Forschungszentrums Migration, Integration und Asyl des Bundesamtes für Migration und Flüchtlinge, Nürnberg

Fendel, Tanja. 2019. Die Arbeitsmarktintegration geflüchteter Frauen. In: WISO direkt, 2019/2

Partners

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