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“Corona has destroyed all plans”

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A current study shows: Refugees have been thrown back on the labor market by the pandemic much more than the rest of the population. According to experts, Corona has interrupted the integration.

From Gisela Staiger, BR The corona pandemic has made it difficult for many refugees to gain a foothold in the labor market. A current study by the Nuremberg Institute for Employment Research (IAB) shows the reasons and reveals the dimensions of the problem: A comparison of December 2019 and 2020 shows that unemployment in the population as a whole rose by just one percentage point within one year . By contrast, unemployment among refugees rose by 2.7 percentage points.

Lockdown makes career entry difficult

Mariam Alashkar is one of those who suffered. The Syrian is a single parent and is looking for an apprenticeship in the medical field. In February 2020, the mother of a four-year-old daughter successfully completed her language course at B2 level. But the time shortly before the first lockdown was extremely bad for starting a career. She writes two applications a week, says Alashkar. The yield is sobering: So far, no one has responded to their letters. In her home country, the 33-year-old first worked in tourism, then as a journalist for a Syrian television station. Now she is further deepening her language skills in order to be fit for the German job market. But their path is still rocky. “I’m ambitious, I had a lot of dreams in Germany,” she says. “I thought: If I finish B2, I’ll find a job straight away, but then Corona came and destroyed everything I had planned.”

IAB study: stopping language courses jointly responsible

According to the IAB study, the pandemic-related suspension of language courses and qualifications in particular led to an above-average increase in unemployment among refugees. According to IAB migration expert Herbert Brücker, the institute had expected that without the pandemic, the employment rate of refugees would have risen by five to eight percentage points in 2020. In reality, however, the rate only increased by one percentage point. “In this respect, one can say that integration has been interrupted. This applies to both the training and the job market,” says Brücker.

Expert: The more time goes by, the worse it gets

For Brücker, Alashkar is a typical example of the current phenomenon among refugees in Germany: “This is precisely the group of people who would have had a very good chance of entering the job market in 2020 or 2021. And these opportunities were able to materialize through the Do not realize the pandemic. ” The longer people have to wait, the greater the risk that motivation and related qualifications such as language skills can be lost. And that makes the subsequent labor market integration more difficult. “In this respect, the pandemic is a particularly tragic event for the refugees.” Alashkar has been moving into Hartz IV for almost a year and a half. The Syrian hopes that the easing will also increase her chances. She has a childcare place for her daughter and could get started at any time. If there was an answer to your applications.

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