Germany is undoubtedly a receiving country for migration2. Every fifth inhabitant of this country comes from immigrant communities. This is especially visible in the youngest generation, where foreigners or people with foreign roots account for nearly a third of children aged under ten. Migrants living in Germany do not form a homogenous community.
They include “Gastarbeiters”, who came to Germany on the basis of employment contracts, people who came to join their families, displaced people and “late displaced people”, members of the European Union settling down in Germany due to freedom of labour movement, and recently there have been more and more people who apply for international protection.
Germany at present is the second most important country accepting immigrants (preceded only by the USA). The number of foreigners living in Germany exceeds 8 million, which accounts for 10% of the population.
The biggest group of foreigners are of Turkish origin (nearly 2.8 million). More than half of them were born in Germany and nearly half already have German citizenship. This still influences the Germans’ impression of immigrants as people with lower qualifications, performing badly-paid jobs. The second largest nation of immigrants are Poles – who outnumber Italians, Romanians and Greeks. In the 1970s-1990s the biggest group of immigrants were late migrants, people with German roots who had lived in Eastern European countries and in the former Soviet Union.
The growing German society accounts for the decreasing pool of working people. The inflow of mostly young people slows this trend down.
The average age of foreigners and people of migrant background in Germany is lower than the average age of Germans who are not of migrant background.
The Bertelsmann Foundation study shows that this is exactly why they positively contribute to the state budget and the social security system (4). Their absence in the labour market would mean that a declining number of workers – who pay social insurance contributions and taxes – would have to finance the growing number of pensioners and to be burdened by public debt. Thanks to the large-scale immigration to Germany, including refugees, the number of working people will increase in the coming years. The federal Statistical Office informs that only with the regular inflow of a large number of immigrants (approximately 200,000 a year) the number of people of working age in Germany could grow.
Referring to some qualifications, regions and sectors, we can already witness the shortage of qualified staff. This presently concerns 19 groups of professions, such as healthcare and nursing sector, mechatronics and electric and electronic sector jobs, construction and energy supply sectors and communication and logistics (5).
Following a long period of sceptical attitudes to accepting immigrants in the German labour market, the introduction of the so-called “green card” in 2000 (facilitating admission of qualified employees, mainly from the IT sector), followed by the immigration act passed in 2005, offered new opportunities for specialists who wanted to emigrate to Germany.
In 2011 the federal government passed the “Fachkräfte-Offensive” program (Offensive for Specialists) in order to attract qualified workers. It covers five fields of activities: employment activation and security, helping workers to balance their professional and family life, education opportunities for everyone from the start, vocational education and training. The last point of the program comprises “integration and immigration of qualified workers” (6). A wide information campaign accompanied the project. The “Make it in Germany” portal, run in many languages, is trying to attract qualified employees all over the world.
Its offer includes a search engine for job vacancies and the map of the world with offers of German institutions on every continent (7).
