Germany Has Revamped Its Approach To Migrants, But Acceptance, Integration Are As Hard As Ever

NUREMBERG, Germany -- "On the first day of the Taliban takeover, they came to my house and took away my car and the weapons we had," says Seema Stanikzai, an Afghan woman in her mid-30s.

She is sitting in the kitchen of her apartment in Rennweg, a neighborhood of Nuremberg in south-central Germany, where she lives with her husband and four children. There is food on the table and the room smells of saffron and freshly baked bread. The first thing Stanikzai does is offer everyone a drink.*

"[The situation with the Taliban] forced me to leave my homeland," says Stanikzai, who has two daughters and two sons and wanted her daughters to go to school.

Since the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, most high schools for girls have been closed, women have been prohibited from attending university, and some have been banned from working.

Many public places -- including gyms and parks -- are now off-limits for women. While the Taliban didn't directly threaten her or her family, Stanikzai says, it was the extremist group's draconian restrictions on women that forced them to leave.

While Stanikzai still longs for home, her family now has political asylum and permanent residency in Germany. They didn't face any significant problems when they arrived, she says; in fact, quite the opposite: On their first day in Germany, they got free transport from the airport to their accommodation and money for food and other necessities.

"The whole process was very well-managed," she says.

What makes Stanikzai even happier is the knowledge that, in the future, her daughters can go to school.

Things were very different in the 1990s. The first time Meho Travljanin tried to make it to Germany, he was 9 years old and had lost his shoes in the forest. It was 1992 and the beginning of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. With his mother and two brothers, Travljanin attempted to cross the border from Slovenia into Austria, only to be caught by the police and sent back. Another year passed before Travljanin was given the green light and allowed to live in Germany.

Travljanin, who now resides in Berlin, is one of over 350,000 refugees that escaped to Germany during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, which killed over 130,000 people and displaced millions. Three decades later, Germany has taken in millions of Ukrainians, Syrians, and Afghans, drastically changing how the country welcomes and integrates migrants. But for the Bosnians who have been in Germany for decades and for the newer arrivals from Afghanistan or Ukraine, much of the core experience of being a refugee has stayed the same: Integration and acceptance is still a long and arduous process.

'Duldung' And 'Hajam'

In a park near his apartment where he walks with his wife and two children, Travljanin remembers his first attempt to try to get into Germany.

"I was [just] wearing woolen socks…all muddy and, with my brothers and mother, we were waiting for the train back to Trbovlje," says Travljanin, referring to the town in Slovenia they were being sent back to.

After that first ill-fated attempt, the family received a letter of guarantee from a relative who had been living in Germany for a while. They finally left Bosnia, one year after fleeing their war-torn hometown of Sanski Most in the north of the country.

In those days, it was all about "duldung" and "hajam." The German word duldung "means to put up with someone," Travljanin says. It was also the official name of the refugees' visa, which had to be extended every six months.

"It was a very traumatic experience for us all, because it was a long wait," he says.

Hajam was a Bosnian rendering of the German word heim, meaning home. It is certainly a beautiful word, Travljanin says, but back then it had a slightly ironic or pejorative tone.

Another Bosnian, Hasan Mehmedovic, spent 80 days living in forests around Tuzla, the country's third-largest city, before he managed to escape to Germany in February 1996. A Bosnian Muslim, he was expelled from his hometown of Drinjaca, in the east of the country, when the war began in 1992. Before making it to Germany, he mostly lived in Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serb forces massacred over 8,000 mostly Muslim men and boys in a war crime that has been legally defined as genocide, including by two UN courts.

Mehmedovic's arrival in Germany didn't put an end to the uncertainty. Because of an issue with his paperwork, he ended up fighting German bureaucracy for nine years, before he eventually received his permanent residency. Mehmedovic's wife, who has been in Germany since 1992 and now has five children, still does not have permanent residency.

Living in a state of legal limbo, Mehmedovic wasn't allowed to leave Germany to go to his father's funeral in 1999. And due to restrictions on his freedom of movement, it was four years before he returned to Bosnia to lay his father to rest, only after he received permission to leave Germany for seven days to bury one of his brothers who was killed in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. Mehmedovic's brother was one of 6,700 of the estimated 8,000 victims to be buried in the nearby village of Potocari.

For the most part, the Bosnian refugees weren't complaining, though.

"We had enough, our apartment was paid for. We even had our excursions paid for," says Travljanin.

His fellow Bosnian, Mehmedovic, experienced much the same, with a paid-for apartment and social assistance throughout his stay.

Acceptance, tolerance, handouts -- what duldung didn't mean was integration.

"I wish Mom had worked, if we had been a part of society, if we weren't on social welfare, if we weren't living in hajam. I wish Mom knew German, if we were somehow integrated," Travljanin says. "You weren't allowed to work, to go to college, to go to trade school. The only thing that minors had to do, because the law stipulated it, was go to elementary school.

"There was no planned training of people, whether it was the language [or] some additional education, because it was not expected that these people were going to stay. And it really was like, 'You're here while the war lasts, and when the war ends, you can return to your country,'" Travljanin says.

Travljanin found the uncertainty -- relentlessly waiting for the other shoe to drop -- very difficult. With your homeland being destroyed by war, it was absolutely normal to think about staying in Germany, Travljanin says. But back then, it didn't even seem like an option.

From Tolerance To Integration

As of June 2023, 13 million out of Germany's 83 million citizens are foreign nationals, according to data from the Federal Statistical Office of Germany. The more recent arrivals have been better served by the system, with Germany making huge strides in how it integrates foreign migrants and refugees, particularly regarding education. Since 2005, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees has offered integration courses that include German-language instruction.

By 2019, more than 2 million people had participated in the program, Saskia Geltenpoth, a spokesperson for the migration office, tells RFE/RL. "The aim of the integration course is for participants to be able to act independently in terms of the German language and be able to get by in everyday life," Geltenpoth says.

For Stanikzai's family, the program has done exactly that.

"My sister goes to school; my sons. too. They learned German and are now actively involved in their studies," Stanikzai says, adding that she is still learning the language. "It's the law here that a person has to learn the language first; that's a basic requirement. For those who want to learn more, there are additional language classes."

Fariba Aram, a young journalist from Afghanistan, is also learning German. She left Afghanistan for Germany in February 2022 because of threats she was receiving from the Taliban. A neighbor of Stanikzai, she often comes for lunch, as do other Afghans living in the Rennweg neighborhood of Nuremberg.

"Seema is the best cook," Aram says. "Learning the language is key. For the Germans, it's important that you learn their language."

Research conducted annually since 2013 by the Research Center of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees shows that knowledge of the German language has increased among refugees, as well as their contacts with the local population. In 2020, for the first time, more than half of the refugees who came to Germany between 2013 and 2016 assessed their German-language skills as "good" or "very good."

Geltenpoth, the spokeswoman for the federal migration and refugees' office, says that language skills are a key element in a successful integration program.

"Numerous empirical studies show that speaking and understanding the language of the host country of residence facilitates access to social contacts, education, or the labor market," Geltenpoth says.

After spending most of his life in Germany, speaking the language is now second nature for Travljanin, although he wishes that the situation in the 1990s was different.

"They just threw you into class," he says, without knowing the language. "I went to elementary school from the fifth grade and, by the eighth grade, I knew German really well."

Mehmedovic also wishes things had been different back then. Now 60, he lives in Berlin with his wife and five children and says he wishes that he had learned German and could work to support his family.

"I had the desire to work, but, theoretically, there was no chance," he says.

Germany's Labor Shortage

Germany's changing approach to how it welcomes and integrates migrants has been partially prompted by the country's labor shortage, due to an ever-shrinking workforce and an aging population. Over the last few years, it has been migrants -- in Germany and more widely across the EU -- who have helped plug the gaps.

"There are more opportunities for Germans and foreigners, migrants, and also refugees. We currently have close to 2 million job vacancies that are not filled," says Karl Kopp, head of the European department at Pro Asyl, an organization that aids refugees and migrants upon arrival in Germany.

Everyone needs workers, Kopp says, from small businesses to bakeries to companies looking for highly skilled technicians. And Germans plan everything, Travljanin says, including how many migrant workers are needed to supplement the country's workforce.

"In order to maintain the level and wealth of everything we have here as a country, we need several hundred thousand new workers every year," Kopp says.

After eight years of bureaucratic battles, Mehmedovic received his permanent residency in November 2005, giving him the right to enter the German workforce. He worked a number of different jobs over the years and is now retired and receiving a state pension. The situation is much better than it was in the 1990s, he says, simply because the country needs more workers.

Most German politicians, Kopp says, have realized that it is neither wise nor humane to keep people out of work and children out of school just because they are waiting to become citizens of this country. "It's better," he says, "to start integrating early."

Now there are refugees from Bosnia working in the German parliament, Kopp says.

"They are no longer refugees," he says. "They are German citizens, politicians, and [they] represent their districts. I would say that's a good approach. I am convinced that if you do it right, [it] will be successful."

Migrants (Not Always) Welcome

Europe's migrant crisis, which divided politicians and publics and emboldened the far right, peaked in 2015, when millions fled the Syrian civil war and the brutal rule of the Islamic State extremist group. Germany alone took in over 1 million Syrian refugees, encouraged by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who gambled her political career by opening the country up. "We can do it," she implored, and the slogan became a popular refrain.

According to research from the Berlin-based Expert Council on Integration and Migration, the majority of people in Germany express solidarity with refugees.

"Three out of four people are ready to donate money," says Nora Storz, a researcher at the council.

Almost two-thirds of the 4,000 people polled in February and March of this year said they would be prepared to help refugees, for example, by accompanying them to a bureaucratic appointment.

Such a warm welcome has largely been Aram's experience, and she says she hasn't received any abuse or harassment in Germany.

"Maybe it's because of the laws that prevent bad treatment of migrants," she says, adding that sometimes she gets "looks" from older people. Young people, Aram says, don't seem to have a problem with migrants.

That doesn't mean that refugees are never targeted.

"Some people here don't wear Afghan clothes when they go out," Stanikzai says, "because they say that the Germans keep staring at them." They should be proud of their culture, she says, because that is what defines them.

For Noor Ullah Arian, a 33-year-old refugee who also worked as a journalist in Afghanistan, it wasn't just people staring. On his journey from Afghanistan to Germany, Arian says he was beaten and verbally abused, including being attacked by police in Belarus. Some of his friends died along the way; others were injured but didn't have health insurance or money for treatment so had to return to Afghanistan. International rights watchdogs, including Amnesty International, have expressed concerns about the treatment migrants receive at the Polish-Belarusian border, where they are often forcibly returned to Afghanistan.

"No one deserves to be insulted or beaten," Arian says. Life then, he adds, just wasn't worth living.

Racism toward people of color is also on the rise in Germany, according to a survey published at the end of October by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). Along with Austria and Finland, Germany had the highest rates of discrimination from the 13 countries surveyed. And for the first three months of 2023, there was an increase in attacks on asylum seekers and their accommodations, according to data from the Infomigrants website, which is co-financed by the European Union. In the first nine months of this year, there were 1,515 attacks on migrants -- usually carried out by far-right extremists -- an increase from 2022, where there were 1,371 attacks throughout the whole year.

While attacks on migrant centers grab the headlines, refugees are made to feel like outsiders in other ways. After all these years living in Germany, learning the language, and then getting citizenship, Travljanin wonders why he is still considered a migrant in many people's eyes. Despite having spent most of his life in Germany, Travljanin says he sometimes feels that what's important is his last name. "You speak German perfectly," he says, "and people still ask what you're doing here?"

In some respects, politics is catching up with popular opinion, and not every politician in Germany has been as enthusiastic about migration as Merkel.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Germany's center-right opposition party that Merkel used to lead, has recently called for a complete overhaul of asylum rules. Mario Voigt, the head of the CDU in the German state of Thuringia, said on December 11 that, "We are a cosmopolitan and hospitable country. But hospitality doesn't mean removing the front door. Instead, hospitality means deciding for ourselves who and how many come into our homes."

German political watchers say the CDU's proposed harder line on migrants is partly an attempt to draw votes away from the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative For Germany (AfD) party, which has its voter base in the former East Germany. With an economic downturn and growing alarm over illegal migration, the party is now seeing record levels of popularity, polling at 22 percent nationally. In state elections in Hesse, held on October 8, the AfD achieved its best result ever in a western German state, coming second to the CDU with 18 percent.

Even Olaf Scholz -- the chancellor who replaced Merkel in December 2021 and who is a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party -- said that too many migrants were coming to Germany and that the authorities will "now differentiate more precisely."

"On the one hand," Scholz said, "it is about the immigration of workers, which we need. And it's [also] about those seeking asylum -- for example, because they are being politically persecuted." If you don't belong to either of those groups, the chancellor said, you shouldn't be able to stay in Germany.

Scholz also said that the German authorities should begin large-scale deportations, saying that those who remain in the country should not only work "but live and integrate as well."

As a country, Scholz added, Germany has the right to decide who it wants to admit.

"Qualified workers and [talented people], for example. And this does not affect [our responsibility] to provide protection to all those who are fleeing political persecution, who are fleeing war and death. The basic right to asylum is embedded in German history," Scholz told the German news website Der Spiegel.

A basic right, according to Scholz, but are those rights applied equally?

Stanikzai says that sometimes she feels like Afghans and Ukrainians are treated differently -- for example, in classrooms. While Kopp says that taking in 1 million Ukrainian refugees was a success story, data from the Expert Council on Integration and Migration confirms Stanikzai's sense that not all refugees are created equal.

In a poll carried out by the migration council in July, respondents made a clear distinction between people of different origins and religions.

"For example, 67 percent of respondents would accompany Ukrainian refugees [to help with a bureaucratic task], while 63 percent would do the same for Syrian or Nigerian refugees," says Storz. "The same applies to religion: 66 percent of participants would support Christians and 63 percent Muslim refugees."

That could simply be prejudice, Storz says, or perhaps it's due to "a sense of [cultural] proximity to Ukrainian and Christian refugees."

'You Never Forget The Place You Were Born'

For Stanikzai, it was the worst day: the day she left Afghanistan. Despite the brutal restrictions of Taliban rule, Stanikzai was reluctant to leave her homeland. After she got permission from the German government to come, she still waited around six months before leaving Afghanistan.

"We hoped that the Taliban would change, that maybe they would open the schools and then we wouldn't have to leave the country. But that didn't happen, and we made the decision to come here," she says.

"You will think about your homeland all the time. You never forget the place you were born," Stanikzai says. "The biggest challenge of immigration is the distance from family and loved ones."

Travljanin agrees that not seeing loved ones is the hardest part.

"I haven't lived in the same city with my brothers and mother for over 20 years. When you have all these beautiful moments in your life and the people who are the most important to you are not there, it's difficult," he says.

It's the little things that help. Stanikzai likes to prepare Afghan cuisine -- for her family but also her neighbors in the Nuremberg apartment block where they live in. Every day, without fail, she takes the time to prepare traditional Afghan saffron tea.

For Travljanin, it's Bosnian coffee -- a tradition he honors every Saturday.

"This is my home. I live here. My children were born here [and] I was educated here," he says. "This is where I work. This is where my friends are. But there is always this longing for something else, [even though] people mostly don't know what they are longing for."

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Seema Stanikzai's surname.