Justin-Casimir Braun: 80 Cents an Hour: The Long-Term Impact of Forced Labor Asylum System

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Project Background

Asylum Seekers entering Western societies are faced with contradictory demands: on the one had, they are chastised for failing to integrate or being reliant on the welfare state. On the other hand, asylum seekers are frequently restricted from fully accessing local labor markets due to residency, language, and professional licensing restrictions. These contradictory demands are reflected in policies that simultaneously aim to exclude and assimilate asylum seekers.

A particularly harsh example of such a policy are labor requirements (Arbeitsgelengheiten, AGH) imposed on asylum seekers in Germany. These AGH include jobs such as janitorial duties in refugee shelters or municipal landscaping, remunerated at 80 cents per hour (the national minimum wage sits at more than 12 Euros). Asylum seekers can be required to participate in AGH or risk losing their asylum seeker benefits. Critically, these work requirements are imposed at a stage in the asylum process where applicants cannot legally seek employment in the primary labor market. In other words, rejecting an AGH can be used as cause to reduce asylum seekers' only means of financial support in what the civil society organization Pro Asyl calls "forced labor". 

Together with Professor Jens Hainmueller and his research group at the Immigration Policy Lab, I set out to evaluate the impact of these AGHs. Our main research question is whether AGHs achieve their stated goals: do they improve long-term integration outcomes (such as labor market performance and language acquisition) for asylum seekers?

Field Work

Our primary research strategy rests on evaluating the labor market outcomes of a large number of refugees through administrative data. But such quantitative work requires a through understanding of how AGHs are implemented on the ground in Germany. The Europe Center grant enabled me to travel to the country and interviews social workers and bureaucrats about their experience with the program. 

After acquiring detailed annual data on the number of AGHs by county (Kreis) and year, I decided to focus on Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg, two Southern states, which already make extensive use of the AGH program. I guided the interviews with a set of pre-written questions, aimed at understanding details about the program's implementation: how are refugees selected for AGHs? What happens if they have prior commitments? What happens if an asylum seeker rejects their AGH? 

While these questions were crucial to understanding the "hard facts" of the program, the in-person interview situation enabled me to establish a level of trust with my interviewees and get their evaluation on some of the thornier dimensions of the program: Should the state force people to participate in the program? Is the wage fair? Does the program actually help asylum seekers to become part of German society or does it have exclusionary effects?

Initial Findings

External vs. internal AGHs: One theme that emerged from multiple interviews was the difference between external AGHs, where asylum seekers work for a municipal non-profit such as animal shelters, and internal AGHs which tend to involve janitorial duties inside asylum seeker accommodations. According to the caseworkers I spoke to, the former bring asylum seekers into contact with the native population, boost language skills, and can sometimes be converted into "proper" employment later on while the latter tend to create misgivings between asylum seekers required to work and those who are not. Given the purported benefits of these external AGHs, the German government had between 2016 and 2020 given additional funding to municipalities for external AGHs, but the funding has since expired.

Public discourse vs. implementation: There was a strong disconnect between the public discourse on AGHs and the concerns of the implementers. The public discourse has revolved on AGHs as a tool of deterrence (to make Germany a less attractive place for refugees) and remuneration (refugees should "pay back" Germany for the support they have received). This exclusionary discourse was sharply contrasted by case workers' concerns with the refugees' welfare. Many of the case workers I talked to became involved in this line of work because they wanted to improve services for refugees rather than make their lives more difficult. Even though they had little time allocated to the organization of AGHs, many went out of their way to find positions that matched asylum seekers' interests and prior skillsets. Case workers found that this work had become more difficult since political pressure had ramped up to boost the number of AGHs. Rather than focusing on integration outcomes, many caseworkers saw the primary benefit of AGHs in giving refugees "something to do" while they waited for the outcome of their asylum process. 

Next Steps

I am currently waiting to obtain individual level data, linking asylum seekers' labor market record with their participation in the AGH program. With this data in hand, we will evaluate the program's impact on long-term labor market integration. The findings from this field work have a number of implications for our quantitative analyses. We will seek to acquire data on whether AGHs were internal or external and introduce a number of controls on the county level to account for the heterogeneity in case worker motivation. We also believe that there may be some heterogenous effects depending on how long asylum seekers have been in Germany: recent arrivals may see AGHs as a useful entrypoint into German society whereas asylum seekers whose cases have dragged on for years may grow increasingly frustrated that they are forced to work essentially without pay. 

Depending on the results of the administrative data, we may field a survey with refugees or conduct additional fieldwork next year.