Integration in Germany

Situation

You are planning on taking part in a discussion about the integration of immigrants in Germany. In the end you are supposed to present ideas on how to help foreigners integrate into the German society.

Getting informed

Read the following text and complete the tasks. The text will provide relevant information on integration of foreigners in Germany.

Text: Where integration quietly works

Four years after Germany took in over one million migrants, integration is quietly working, one village at a time.

by Katrin Bennhold

A The invitation was risky, and Mayor Frank Schütz knew it. Bringing Syrian immigrants to his remote German village, where the anti-immigrant far right is popular and many locals already feel like second-class citizens? “Madness,” the hairdresser opined. “Impossible,” a farmer concluded. But it was the only way to save the village school — the soul and center of Golzow, which like many rural areas of the former communist East Germany lost a third of its population in the disruptive years after the Berlin Wall fell. In the summer of 2015, as hundreds of thousands of migrants made their way to Germany, the number of school-age children in Golzow had fallen to a new low. There was not going to be a first grade. It was the beginning of the end for a school that was once the backdrop for “The Children of Golzow,” an epic Communist-era documentary that followed a cohort of first graders through decades of life behind the Iron Curtain.

B But then Kamala, Bourhan, Hamza, Nour, Tasnim, Ritaj, Rafeef, Roaa, big Mohammad and little Mohammad arrived with their parents. The new children of Golzow, the mayor called them. “The Syrians saved our school”, Mr. Schütz said in a recent interview. And Golzow, in a way, saved itself. When it comes to welcoming migrants, Golzow is a microcosm of Germany, at least arithmetically. The 16 Syrians that settled in this village of 820 inhabitants represent the same share of the population as the roughly 1.5 million who arrived nationwide after 2015. Their story is a tale about befriending the other even as one in four people in the town voted for the far-right Alternative for Germany in recent elections. It is also evidence that beneath the fears fanning the populist flame in Europe’s biggest democracy, the integration of hundreds of thousands of migrants is quietly working, one village at a time. Across the country, more than one in three are now employed, government statistics show.

C Four years after the Syrians arrived, Golzow has changed — for the better, most seem to agree. Empty apartments have new life in them. At the annual sunflower fair, Arabic pastries sit next to German apple tarts. When the school caretaker needs help sweeping up leaves, Fadi, Ahmed and Mahmoud, the Syrian fathers, are among the first to volunteer. One villager, whose own grandchildren live hundreds of miles away, has taken three Syrian children under his wing, teaching them how to fish and swim. The children call him “Opa,” German for grandfather. It wasn’t always like this. When Mr. Schütz first gathered villagers to explain his idea to bring in Syrians, there was a lot of skepticism. [Some] worried that the newcomers would be noisy or steal, Mr. Schütz recalled. Halima Taha was skeptical, too. “East Germany? Are you crazy?” her Syrian friends told her over the phone after her family was bused from Berlin to an asylum center in the east and eventually to Golzow, Ms. Taha recalled. They don’t like foreigners over there, her friends said. It’s dangerous.

D But then both sides made an effort — and were surprised by how much they liked each other. Ms. Taha, a bubbly 32-year-old mother of three who speaks German with a soft regional lilt, recalled the flowers and toys the mayor brought when he first welcomed her family to their new home. Villagers donated things to help the family furnish their apartment, including dishes and a set of antlers.  Ms. Taha told her children to greet every villager on the street from Day 1 — in German. “I learned with my eyes,” she said of her efforts to blend in. The family bought a German shepherd and grows vegetables on an allotment, embracing a very German postwar tradition. Ms. Taha’s husband, Fadi, goes fishing, like other local men. By now, all six Syrian adults have found work. Ms. Taha, a trained pharmacist whose Syrian diploma is not recognized in Germany, works in a nursing home, filling one of many vacancies in a country with a rapidly aging population. “They have become important parts of our community”, Gaby Thomas, the local head teacher, said of the Syrian families.

E Overcoming prejudice is hard. The people of Golzow know that first hand. When the Berlin Wall came down 30 years ago, East Germans won freedom and democracy. But they lost their jobs, their status and their country almost overnight. Many now see reunification as a western takeover that failed to acknowledge, let alone value, anything that constituted life in the communist East. If the original children of Golzow debunked Western myths about easterners, the new children of Golzow have debunked myths about immigrants. In the process, local residents and their new Syrian neighbors have discovered that they have some things in common. Both feel displaced. Some parallels are strikingly concrete. Several villagers settled in Golzow as children, having fled German territories in Poland at the end of World War II. A former mayor was among them. “The Syrian children in the village have the same life experience as the oldest people in the village”, said Mr. Schütz, the current mayor. “They both know what it sounds like when a grenade explodes.”

F But things are mostly good, Ms. Taha said. By now, 12-year-old Kamala and her brothers Bourhan, 11, and Hamza, 6, are so fluent in German that they even swear at one another in German when they fight. In four years, the whole family plans to apply for German citizenship. “The village is like a family,” Ms. Taha said. “And we are now part of that family.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/world/europe/germany-golzow-syria-refugees.html (abridged and adapted)

Discussion

Collect ideas for the discussion on integrating foreigners in Germany.