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German skills, worries and satisfaction with life among refugees during the first year of the pandemic , , The fifth wave of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees
BAMF Brief Analysis 2|2022 examines how refugees' German skills, as well as worries and satisfaction with life, developed between 2016 and 2020. The analyses place a special focus on developments during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Data from the five waves of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees are used to analyse how language acquisition, worries and satisfaction with life developed between 2016 and 2020. Comparing the data from 2019 and 2020 permits to examine changes that occurred during the first year of the pandemic. The data from the fifth wave of the survey were collected between August 2020 and February 2021, and therefore cover the second half of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The most important results at a glance
The majority reports "good" to "very good" knowledge of German in 2020.
2020 was the first year in which a majority of refugees (52 percent) who had arrived in Germany between 2013 and 2016 assessed their knowledge of German as "good" to "very good". As in the years prior to the pandemic, differences in German skills between several groups were also observed in 2020. Particularly women with small children, those who had achieved a low level of education, and older refugees, continued to report a comparatively lower level of German in 2020.
From 2016 to 2020 the learning curve for acquiring German skills is flattening.
If one takes a look at average knowledge of German over time, it becomes clear that it improves on average from one year to the next. This improvement was more pronounced from 2016 to 2018, and the learning curve gets flatter from 2018 onwards. The consequence of this is that the average improvement in German is no longer statistical significant from 2019 to 2020. This means that during the first year of the pandemic refugees were no longer able to further improve their German skills, yet, their German skills also did not worsen over this period.
Mostly no increase in the number of refugees with major worries during the first year of the pandemic.
An analysis of individuals who are very concerned with regard to their prospects to stay in Germany, their own economic situation, or their health, shows that there was no increase in the number of refugees with major worries during the first year of the pandemic. It was only among refugees whose deportation had been temporarily suspended (holders of a "Duldung") that there was a statistically significant increase in the number of individuals who were highly concerned about their own health between 2019 and 2020.
Satisfaction with life increased among refugees between 2019 and 2020.
The research indicates that average satisfaction with life remains relatively stable over time. This may however change due to the experiences of critical events such as a pandemic. Refugees' average satisfaction with life did not change statistically significantly during the period from 2016 and 2019. Interestingly, however, the level of satisfaction rose from 2019 to 2020. This increase during the first year of the pandemic suggests that – all in all - refugees were able to cope relatively well during this period. However, this does not apply to all refugees equally: Whilst 27 percent of refugees were more satisfied with their lives in 2020 than they had been in 2019, 56 percent reported similar levels, and another 17 percent reported lower satisfaction levels in 2020 than they had in 2019.
With further waves of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees, it will be possible to examine how German skills, worries and satisfaction with life developed as the pandemic advanced further.
The Brief Analysis was drafted by: Wenke Niehues