I am happy @TheEconomist decided to knight me with a quote - but even happier the text is so nuanced. Yes, we did well in many ways. But there is a long way to go. Thread on #integration of #refugees in 1/12 @tom_nuttall @MercatorDE https://amp.economist.com/europe/2020/08/25/five-years-after-wir-schaffen-das-germanys-migrants-are-integrating

Good news on employment: 5 years after arrival, half of protection seekers are in jobs. But, unsurprisingly, the #gender gap is huge: women are only half as likely to work as men. 2/12 Source: @iab_news http://doku.iab.de/kurzber/2020/kb0420.pdf

More than half of protection seekers work in skilled jobs, but a large share (44%) still in unskilled jobs. So they have a long way to catch up with native Germans (13%) or to where they were before fleeing their country (16%). 3/12 Source: @iab_news http://doku.iab.de/kurzber/2020/kb0420.pdf

Good housing news: 75 % of protection seekers had moved out of communal living arrangements into private apartments/houses in 2018, up from 54% in 2016. But: Ppl in deferred deportation or in process fare worse than those approved. 4/12 @BAMF_Dialog https://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Forschung/Kurzanalysen/kurzanalyse5-2020-wohnen.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=7#page=3

Same with residency restrictions: Most approved asylum seekers are free to move where they want (less than 3 in 10 affected), but most others are not (8 in 10 people with deferred deportation have to stay within their community, nearly all of them within their Bundesland). 5/12

The take-away: Your legal status is a strong factors that can help or hinder your #integration success. People in Duldung (more than 200,000) have notably worse integration outcomes than those approved... 6/12

...even though many of them will stay in Germany for a long time. This legal limbo is bad for the people in Duldung AND bad for Germany. 7/12 Source @dgapev https://dgap.org/de/forschung/publikationen/deutsche-rueckkehrpolitik-und-abschiebungen

The impact on children? 1 in 5 Syrian kids (19%) attends Gymnasium (on-ramp into tertiary ed+a career), but only 1 in 10 Afghans (10%).One reason-among others-for this gap: Syrians are much likelier than Afghans to have safe legal status. 8/12 @BAMF_Dialog https://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Forschung/Kurzanalysen/kurzanalyse2-2019-ankommen-im-deutschen-bildungssystem.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=12#page=7

The good news, though: Educational integration of children overall is going well: Nearly all protection seekers under 18 are in school or vocational training: 80% elementary or secondary school, 15% in VET and 5% waiting to start or not in school. 9/12

The main lesson: 5 years after #Merkel said "We can handle this.", integration is going well for some groups, but not at all well for others. Our 2015-16 policies that gave help to some groups (& withheld it from others) are showing effects - both good and bad. 10/12

How to fix this in the future? We need a strategy what to do with the 1/4million people without legal status in . @TheEconomist nails it: "Germany seems afraid both of enforcing its rules and of making it too easy for failed... 11/12

...asylum-seekers to find alternative ways into German society. As the numbers grow, the dilemma worsens." Take note @BMI_Bund @AuswaertigesAmt @BK_Amt: This legal limbo problem is not going to go away. We need pragmatic solutions. Here our ideas https://dgap.org/de/forschung/publikationen/der-disput-um-nicht-autorisierte-migranten 12/END