Germany
Ideologies on learner subjectivity in the German integration course
[...]scholars like Kien Nghi Ha and Markus Schmitz raised objections about the very establishment of the German integration program and argued that it extended the colonial legacy of seeking to control immigrants arriving in Germany.7 This was not an objection to or condemnation of genuine efforts to resettle refugees through language and culture classes, but rather a recognition that the…
2023
Assessing the criteria for equality of the right: Refugees’ higher education from the perspective of human rights [Hak Eşitliğine İlişkin Kriterlerin Değerlendirilmesi: İnsan Hakları Perspektifinden Mültecilerin Yükseköğrenimi]
With the Syrian refugee crisis, the subject of refugees’ access to HE, which was only partially funded owing to donor reluctance, was prominently covered in the news, with concepts such as preventing the lost generation, resilience, reconstructing countries, and education as a human right. With the Ukraine crisis, the issue of supporting the higher education of refugees came to the…
2023
Ethnic diversity fosters the social integration of refugee students
Forced migration has become a global megatrend, and many refugees are school aged. As social integration is key to their wellbeing and success, it is pivotal to determine factors that promote the social integration of refugee youth within schools. Here, using a large, nationally representative social network dataset from Germany, we examine the relationships of refugee adolescents with their peers…
2023
Prevalences of mental distress and its associated factors in unaccompanied refugee minors in Germany
Prevalences for mental disorders within minor refugees are comparatively high and heterogeneous. To reduce heterogeneity and identify high-risk subgroups, we compared unaccompanied refugee minors (URM) to accompanied refugee minors (ARM) regarding depressive symptoms and mental distress. Furthermore, we examined associative factors of mental distress in URM on a broad scale. We conducted a survey with a cross-sectional design in four…
2023
Gender
English
Resilience & adaptation
Unaccompanied & separated children
Mental health & psychosocial well-being
Formal education
Tertiary education
Detention & deportation
Language education
Germany
Surveys & questionnaire
Cross-sectional study
Regression analysis
Vocational & technical education
Integration & assimilation
Adult education & training
Caregivers
Pre-schoolers’ images, intergroup attitudes, and liking of refugee peers in Germany
There is extensive research on children's intergroup attitudes, but their perceptions of refugee children have rarely been studied. We conducted a study with 5- and 6-year-old children (N = 60) in Germany following the arrival of unprecedented large numbers of refugees in 2015 and 2016. Children completed a set of three tasks that measured their perceptions of refugee children (minority…
2023
With a little help from my friends? Acculturation and mental health in Arabic-speaking refugee youth living with their families
Introduction: Refugee youth are often faced with the compounding challenges of heightened exposure to traumatic events and acculturating to a new country during a developmental period when their sense of self is still forming. This study investigated whether refugee youth's acculturation orientation (separation, integration, marginalization, and assimilation) is associated with depressive and posttraumatic stress symptoms and aimed to identify additional…
2023
Teaching refugee students: the role of teachers’ attitudes towards cultural diversity
This article focuses on the role of teachers' attitudes towards cultural diversity in teaching refugee students in Germany. We examine which patterns of attitudes towards cultural diversity are common among teachers, how these depend on their professional experience and how they correlate with the perceptions of problems in teaching refugee students. Using data from the project 'Changing schools in a…
2023
Place of Residence Does Matter for Educational Integration: The Relevance of Spatial Contexts for Refugees’ Transition to VET in Germany
For the mostly young refugees who arrived in Germany around 2015/2016, completing vocational education and training (VET) represents the most promising opportunity for professional and social integration. However, access opportunities to VET are characterized by spatial inequalities: German districts vary considerably according to labour market structure, economic productivity and demographic development, which constitute the supply and demand for training places…
2023
Implementation and quality of an early childhood education program for newly arrived refugee children in Germany: an observational study
Early childhood education [ECE] can foster the social-emotional adjustment and development of young refugee children. Still, the large numbers of newly arriving refugee families challenge the ECE capacities of host countries. In Germany, state authorities have subsidized flexible ECE programs for refugee children in response to this situation. The goal of this study was to examine the implementation and quality…
2023
The role of recent refugees’ educational selectivity in their children’s educational decisions in Germany
This paper uses the example of newly arrived refugees to examine the role of recent migrants' educational selectivity in their children's educational decisions in Germany. Building on a theoretical model that understands participation in the educational system as the sum of investment decisions of rational individuals, we assume that positively selected parents are more ambitious about having their children admitted…
2023
School-based mental health screenings with Ukrainian adolescent refugees in Germany: Results from a pilot study
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, high numbers of Ukrainians, mostly women and children, have left the country. As of today, Germany has accepted more than one million refugees fleeing from Ukraine including similar to 200,000 children and adolescents registered in German schools. Since refugee minors are typically affected by high rates of mental health issues, the…
2023
The Requirement of a Situated Approach in the Treatment of Preschool Children with a Refugee Background: Discussion of a Case Study [Die Notwendigkeit eines situierten Ansatzes bei der Behandlung von Vorschulkindern mit Fluchthintergrund: Diskussion eines Fallbeispiels]
In recent years, increasingly more German-born preschool children of refugee parents have been referred to the 'specialized consultation service for refugee minors' of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University Hospital Munster. This 'change' in the use of the above-mentioned consultation service could be understood as a 'natural' consequence of the family life cycle of forced migrants…
2023
Vocabulary recommendation approach for forced migrants using informal language learning tools
Learning a new language is a major challenge faced by many forced migrants. Current vocabulary learning curricula are not adapted to the migrants’ needs, which makes the learning process even more challenging. Today, the widespread use of smartphones among forced migrants provides us with new opportunities to collect and recommend the vocabulary they need. In this work, we propose a…
2022
Stateless in School: The ‘discomfort’ of Kurdish asylum seekers
The lives of children seeking asylum and refuge are complex; invariably both transnational and intersectional. Their educational needs and schooling experiences are often overlooked or lack nuanced understandings. This article focusses on Kurdish children seeking asylum in Germany. Qualitative data is presented to uncover the perceptions and understandings of schools, teachers and parents of children living through their unique educational…
2022
Refugee Children’s Early Development during Attendance of Specialized Preschool Programs and Transition into First Grade in Germany
Research Findings: We assessed socio-emotional behavior, nonverbal reasoning, German receptive language, and motor skills of refugee children attending early childhood development [ECD] programs and of those who did not (N = 207, mean age = 69.4 months). Young refugee children overall demonstrated lower levels of development and more socio-emotional behavior problems. Attendance of preschool-based ECD programs was inconsistently linked to…
2022
Post-migration ecology in educational leadership and policy for social justice: Welcoming refugee students in two distinct national contexts
Utilizing the post-migration ecological lens and the synthesized model of culturally relevant leadership formed by the authors, we aim to compare and analyze the policy outlines and school leadership responses to refugee education in Turkey and Germany; as the two main hosts of the largest number of refugees. Through comparative phenomenology, we draw on the semi-structured interviews, observations, and document…
2022
Durable supports for refugees in higher education through resisting short-termism and organisational memory loss: illustrative cases from Australia and Germany
Recently, an increasing number of students from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds (SRABs) entering universities in settlement countries such as Australia and Germany have necessitated the establishment of a variety of supports, both as formal programs and informal ad-hoc networks. However, to date, little attention has been paid to the organisational conditions surrounding such supports. This study thus examined these conditions…
2023
Chances and discrimination in dual vocational training of refugees and immigrants in Germany
This article depicts the obstacles within the vocational education for trainees with escape and migration experience in Germany. The structure of the highly formalised vocational training system in Germany is based on the assumption of a ‘normal case’ of an educational biography. However, this neither applies to the often-broken educational pathways of refugees and immigrants, nor to an increasing number…
2023
ICT-enabled Refugee Integration: A Research Agenda
The recent phenomenon that has become known as the European refugee crisis is, in reality, a global problem. Accordingly, issues regarding refugee integration have become a central debate topic worldwide. In this paper, we examine how refugees use information and communication technology (ICT) in different regions across the world to understand how ICT supports their desperate journey to safety, their…
2019
Change or continuity? A comparative study of the immigrant integration models of Turkey and Germany after the Syrian Crisis
This study aimed to explore the effects of the Syrian refugee crisis on the immigrant integration policies and hence the national models of Turkey and Germany. It tried to assess whether there is a continuity or divergence in the policies after 2011. It also tried to match the two countries with one of the immigrant integration models discussed in the…
2019
World-mindedness of young people during the rise in migration in Europe: a case study of Czechia, Finland, Germany and The Netherlands.
During the 2015 sudden rise in migration movements in Europe, approximately 2.4 million refugees arrived in Europe and 1.2 million asylum applications were received in the European Union countries. We were interested in finding out whether these rapid changes and the polarised attitudes represented in the media affected young people's attitudes towards people with different cultural backgrounds. This study, therefore,…
2022
How schools in Germany shape and impact the lives of adolescent refugees in terms of mental health and social mobility
Schools are relevant settings for supporting refugee adolescents' mental health. As education and migration are important social determinants of health, we aim to integrate the qualitative findings of our mixed-methods study into a broader discussion regarding the role of schools and the potential effects on refugee adolescents' lives and mental health, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.…
2022
Thrown in at the deep end? Perceptions of burdens, gains, and contributions to the integration of refugee students among teachers with(out) target group-specific professional knowledge
In Germany, young migrants and refugees whose German language skills are not sufficient for attending regular classes at school are assigned to so-called “preparation classes”. As the name implies, the main objective of these classes is to teach German language skills and thereby prepare students for regular classes or vocational education and training. Teachers in these classes face special challenges:…
2022
A help or hindrance? Highly educated refugees’ perceptions of the role of civic integration programmes in accessing the labour market in Oslo, Malmö and Munich
Research often focuses on individual-level factors shaping refugee labour market participation. Less research has been conducted on the implications of the roles of employers, integration programmes, migrant support organisations and similar. This article contributes to the literature by seeking to understand highly educated refugees’ perceptions of how civic integration programmes shape opportunity structures for their labour market participation. It is…
2022
The dynamics of recent refugees’ language acquisition: how do their pathways compare to those of other new immigrants?
Do the processes underlying destination-language acquisition differ between recently arrived refugees and other new immigrants? Based on a well-established model of language learning according to which language fluency is a function of efficiency, incentives, and exposure, this study addresses general processes of language learning as well as conditions specific to refugees. Longitudinal data on refugees (IAB-BAMF-SOEP Sample of Refugees in…
2022
Coping of Young Refugees in Germany: Relations to Gender, Age, and Gender Role Attitudes
Background: Coping is considered to have an important influence on well-being, especially in adolescent refugees dealing with a high amount of stress. In addition, gender differences in coping are a common topic for research and are often attributed to differences in socialization between boys and girls. Aims: The study aims at clarifying the gender differences in coping strategies used by…
2022
Sustainable Development Goals and social work in the migration context–a higher education dialogue between Germany, Jordan, and Lebanon
Germany, Jordan, and Lebanon’s social, political, and socio-economic structures are influenced by a long history of them receiving refugees and migrants. This was a starting point for the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg (Germany), the German Jordanian University, Yarmouk University (Jordan), and the Lebanese University to engage in an intercultural and professional exchange project on social work in the field…
2022
Accommodation, empowerment and disinvestment—Typical second-language learning trajectories of Syrian refugees in Germany
This paper asks how refugees' second-language learning processes are embedded in their lives in host countries. To address this question, the paper proposes the concept of second-language learning trajectories. These trajectories explain refugees' second-language learning as closely intertwined with learners' self-understanding, experiences and positioning in host countries. Using longitudinal narrative interview data from Syrian refugees in Germany, the paper identifies…
2023
New migrants, new challenges?-Activating multilingual resources for understanding mathematics: Institutional and interactional factors
New adolescent migrants from Arabic-speaking countries face complex challenges when participating in regular mathematics classes in Germany: They have been educated in their family language(s) and are obliged to adapt to a new (second or target) language and to different styles of teaching. In contrast, 3rd generation multilingual students, who usually are schooled in German only, have rarely ever used…
2022
Gender Differences in Second Language Proficiency-Evidence from Recent Humanitarian Migrants in Germany
In this paper, we address gender differences in the host language proficiency of humanitarian migrants. Prior research has produced inconclusive results with regard to women's host language proficiency relative to that of men: sometimes women's proficiency exceeds that of men, sometimes women lag behind men, and sometimes there are no substantial differences. Using data on recent humanitarian migrants in Germany,…
2022
The Civic Engagement and Social Integration of Refugees in Germany
Civil society has played an important role in meeting the challenges of refugee migration in recent years. This commentary documents the importance of civic engagement for the integration of refugees by linking individual survey data on refugees to a regional measure of civic engagement in Germany. Using the density of newly established civic associations at the county level as a…
2022
German Language Acquisition of Refugee Children—The Role of Preschools and Language Instruction
Mastering the language of the destination country is key to immigrant and refugee children's educational success. Refugee children typically face the challenge of starting or continuing their educational carrier in a completely new context and in a completely new language. In this study, we examine the role of preschool attendance and formal language instruction in supporting young refugee children to…
2022
Educational Assimilation of First-Generation and Second-Generation Immigrants in Germany
Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984–2018, we analyze the intergenerational education mobility of immigrants in Germany by identifying the determinants of differences in educational stocks for first- and second-generation immigrants in comparison to individuals without a migration background. Our results show that on average, first-generation immigrants have fewer years of schooling than native-born Germans and have a…
2022
Educational Policies Matter: How Schooling Strategies Influence Refugee Adolescents’ School Participation in Lower Secondary Education in Germany
This article investigates the educational participation of refugee adolescents in Germany as a main European destination country of refugee migration. Opportunities and restrictions for school participation vary not only across countries–, but in the case of the Federal Republic of Germany, also within countries. The influence of different regional educational policies on refugees' educational participation and the extent to which…
2022
PARTICIPATION OF REFUGEE YOUTH IN GERMANY’S VET SYSTEM: REAL-WORLD LABS AS OPPORTUNITIES FOR CO-CONSTRUCTIVE KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND INNOVATIVE PRACTICE TRANSFORMATION
Germany has become the most important destination country for young refugees in Europe (Destatis, 2021). Vocational education and training can make an important contribution to overcome educational barriers and gain participation in society (Will & Hohmut, 2020). Since 2015, rural regions have faced new challenges in establishing effective support systems for young apprentices with forced migration experience (Ohliger et al.,…
2022
Holistic refugee and newcomer education in Europe: Mapping, upscaling and institutionalising promising practices from Germany, Greece and the Netherlands
Education is one of the most important fields to promote the integration of refugee and newcomer children and youths in host countries. However, holistic education for refugee and newcomers has so far not been established into mainstream education systems in European countries. Projects and pilot programmes have developed across Europe to test holistic approaches. Some of them have started very…
2022
Access for Syrian refugees into higher education in Germany: a systematic literature review
In the early years of the twenty-first century, the European Union faced an influx of refugees from war-torn areas of the world. By the end of 2015, nearly a million new refugees had arrived in Germany alone, half of them from Syria. Understanding how the Syrian refugee population has interacted with the German system of higher education is crucial for…
2022
Socio-Emotional Problems and Learning Skills of Roma and Recently Arrived Refugee Children in German Elementary Schools
Background: In Germany, many recently arrived and minority families live in multi-ethnic, high-poverty districts. Multiple risk factors threaten their children s development. Aims: We examined the socio-emotional problems of these children in relation to their academic learning skills and executive functioning. Method: We compared teacher-rated socio-emotional problems of n = 112 Roma children (90% foreign-born), n = 101 refugee children…
2022
An interpretive perspective on co-production in supporting refugee families’ access to childcare in Germany
The arrival of large numbers of refugees in Germany since 2015 has led to unprecedented levels of civic participation in service delivery. This is supported in integration policy, including through local coordination. We connect this empirical case with the conceptual debate on co-production, adopting an interpretive approach. We explore how volunteers and local coordinators interpret encounters between civic and state…
2022
Teachers in Transition. A Biographical Perspective on Transnational Professionalisation of Internationally Educated Teachers in Germany
Teachers trained in one country are often not allowed to serve as teachers in another country because their teacher’s license is not recognised as equivalent. The barriers these teachers have to overcome in order to work in their profession again are high and often require further (full) teacher training at the university. The paper provides insights into the conditions for…
2022
Non-verbal cognitive development, learning, and symptoms of PTSD in 3- to 6-year-old refugee children
As IQ tests are commonly used as key assessment method, we address the question whether our commonly used standardized IQ tests are appropriate for children from families of diverse cultures and different educational levels in a refugee population. We examined 109 refugee children aged 3–7 years (M = 5.10 years, SD = 1.25) with the “Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children “ (KABC-II;…
2022
Weigand E.
Dudek V.
Münch K.
Aberl S.
Eckler L.V.
Nehring I.
Friedmann A.
Plener P.L.
Fegert J.M.
Mall V.
Hahnefeld A.
Sukale T.
English
Mental health & psychosocial well-being
Assessment
Camp setting
Formal education
Language education
Germany
Primary education
Experimental & quasi-experimental study
Early childhood education
Special education
Cognitive learning & development
Randomised control trial
Correlational analysis
Caregivers
Gender
Special Needs Assessment in Bilingual School-Age Children in Germany
Educational and (psycho-)linguistic research on L1 and L2 acquisition in bilingual children sketches them as a group of language learners varying in many aspects. However, most studies to date have based evaluations of language proficiency or new assessment tools on data from heritage children, while studies on the appropriateness of assessment tools for school-age refugee children remain a notable exception.…
2022
Relative education of recent refugees in Germany and the Middle East: Is selectivity reflected in migration and destination decisions?
In this paper, relative education profiles of recent refugees arriving to Germany from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are described and compared to the profiles of Syrians in Jordan and Lebanon and of internally displaced Iraqis. Relative education describes a migrant's position in the educational distribution of the origin population. For recent refugees, relative education could be reflected in the decision…
2022
Integration Through Education: Using ICT in Education to Promote the Social Inclusion of Refugees in Germany
Social inclusion of refugees through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has been gaining attention by researchers in the field of Information Systems. On a similar context, recent research has identified education among the main dimensions of integration and social inclusion of refugees. This study aims to uncover some of the benefits of ICT solutions related to education and digital learning…
2022
SIRIUS Watch 2021: Towards inclusive digital education for migrant children
SIRIUS Watch 2021 presents trends and developments on the effects of digitalisation in education on migrant children both pre- COVID-19 and during COVID-19. It will build on national and EU-level research, as well as the results of the SIRIUS Online Digital Workshop. The results include a clear framework of challenges and recommendations to support the development of an inclusive digital…
2021
Learning to integrate, waiting to belong: language, time and uncertainty among newcomers in Germany
What happens when we require newcomers to learn a country’s dominant language before they can work, study and become citizens? At first blush, this may seem beneficial for newcomers and local communities alike. In fact, language proficiency requirements across Europe are often treated as innocuous components of broader immigration policies. However, recent scholarship in linguistic anthropology and related fields has…
2021
The integration of asylum seekers and refugees in the field of education and the labour market: Comparative thematic report
This report is based on a meta-analysis of nine national reports on integration from countries along the so-called Eastern Mediterranean Route. It includes two countries beyond the EU, Turkey and Iraq, which have played an important role as source and transit countries of refugees, the transit countries of Greece, Italy and Poland, and the destination countries of Austria, Germany, Sweden,…
2021
Example of best practice: refugee teachers at the University of Potsdam. A requalification program for newly arrived teachers in Germany
The Refugee Teachers Program, established at the University of Potsdam, Brandenburg, in 2016, represents a successful model for training and integrating individuals with foreign teaching qualifications through an 18-month teaching and language course. Initially created to help meet the demand for teachers in Germany, the Refugee Teachers Program has been further refined over the course of the last three years…
2021
Three Contexts As The Post-Migration Ecology For Refugees: School Principals’ Challenges And Strategies In Turkey, Lebanon, And Germany
This article seeks to compare and analyze school-level challenges for school leaders and their responses to Syrian refugee education in Turkey, Lebanon, and Germany, drawing on the post-migration ecology framework developed and sensemaking processes in leadership. We utilized a comparative qualitative design within the realm of qualitative research. Findings revealed that the challenges are similar across the three contexts and…
2021
Enhancing social work education’s diversity-oriented perspective by integrating refugees into higher education: Experiences from the ‘refugee crisis’ in Germany
This note describes how integrating refugees into programs of social work education at universities and universities of applied sciences in Germany influenced the education provided, especially in rural areas where student bodies tend to be homogeneous groups. The refugees enrolled in social work courses changed those mostly homogeneous groups of students not only with their presence but moreover by introducing…
2021