TY  - JOUR
A1  - Tjaden, Jasper
A1  - Spörlein, Christoph
T1  - How much do “local policies” matter for refugee integration?
BT  - an analytical model and evidence from a highly decentralized country
JF  - International migration review
N2  - A growing number of studies have recently postulated a so-called local turn in the study of immigrant and refugee integration policy. A fundamental, yet untested, assumption of this body of research is that local (sub-national) policies and administrations shape how migrants and refugees integrate into society. We develop and apply an analytical model using multilevel modeling techniques based on large-N, longitudinal survey data (N > 9000) with refugees (2012–2018) in a highly decentralized country (Germany) to estimate the scope for local policy effects net of individual-level and state- and district-level characteristics. We show that region and district-level variation in integration outcomes across multiple dimensions (employment, education, language, housing, social) is limited (∼5%) within 4–8 years after immigration. We find modest variation in policy indicators (∼10%), which do not appear to directly translate into outcomes. We discuss implications for the study of local policies and the potential for greater convergence between administrative and political science, interested in governance structures and policy variation, and sociology and economics, interested primarily in integration outcomes.
KW  - refugee
KW  - policy
KW  - integration
Y1  - 2023
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183231205561
SN  - 0197-9183
SN  - 1747-7379
PB  - Sage Publications
CY  - Thousand Oaks
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Khalil, Samir
A1  - Kohler, Ulrich
A1  - Tjaden, Jasper
T1  - Is  there a rural penalty in language acquisition?
BT  - evidence from Germany's refugee allocation policy
JF  - Frontiers in sociology
N2  - Emerging evidence has highlighted the important role of local contexts for integration trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees. Germany's policy of randomly allocating asylum seekers across Germany may advantage some and disadvantage others in terms of opportunities for equal participation in society. This study explores the question whether asylum seekers that have been allocated to rural areas experience disadvantages in terms of language acquisition compared to those allocated to urban areas. We derive testable assumptions using a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) which are then tested using large-N survey data (IAB-BAMF-SOEP refugee survey). We find that living in a rural area has no negative total effect on language skills. Further the findings suggest that the "null effect" is the result of two processes which offset each other: while asylum seekers in rural areas have slightly lower access for formal, federally organized language courses, they have more regular exposure to German speakers.
KW  - refugees
KW  - allocation policies
KW  - rural
KW  - language acquisition
KW  - intergroup
KW  - contacts
KW  - language courses
KW  - integration
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2022.841775
SN  - 2297-7775
VL  - 7
PB  - Frontiers Media
CY  - Lausanne
ER  -