The German Integration Panel: how to measure the influence of integration courses on migrants integration?

Abstract

In 2005, Germany’s Federal Government introduced integration courses in order to enable migrants to improve their German language skills and thereby also their general integration into German society. From 2005 to 2007, about 500,000 migrants were granted the right to take part in an integration course. Several methodological challenges had to be overcome when establishing the German Integration Panel, a longitudinal survey aimed at analysing the efficiency and sustainability of integration courses and the impact they have on general integration processes. Among the key issues of this large-scale survey was its global design, especially the composition and accessibility of a control group of non-course participants as well as the assessment of German language proficiency.