RAPID: Baseline Survey of Asylum Seekers in Germany

欧洲各国政府目前正面临二战以来最大规模的难民危机。2014年，欧洲登记了大约56.7万份新的庇护申请，自那以来，这个数字已经超过了2015年1月至7月的总收容人数。鉴于中东危机没有减弱的迹象，可以预计这些人口流动将继续，给欧洲各国政府带来巨大压力。寻求庇护者的大规模涌入在许多欧洲国家造成了严重的政治后果。尽管难民融合一直是一个长期而紧迫的目标，但学者和政策制定者对如何最好地实现这一目标有强烈的意见，但几乎没有证据。这项研究将收集新的证据并应用创新技术来评估哪些政策促进难民成功地融入收容国的社会、政治和经济，以及哪些措施可能失败或适得其反。德国是这项研究的重点，因为它是迄今为止接收最近难民人数最多的欧洲国家。使用移动消息应用程序(WhatsApp)并与地方政府和非政府组织合作，将创建一个由最近抵达德国的寻求庇护者组成的大型小组，以及时了解政策参数如何影响难民融入社会。我们项目的特点是，我们将为研究和政策界提供两个重要工具。首先，对于研究人员，我们将通过WhatsApp测试和评估一种新的小组招聘和留住方法，该方法可用于高度流动的人群。其次，对于政策制定者，我们将提供有关欧洲寻求庇护者的现状和前景的系统信息。从长远来看，这项研究将为政策讨论提供系统的证据，说明庇护程序的影响和难民随后融入社会的方案。此外，利用我们从德国学到的东西，我们将能够将这些知识应用到美国的案件中。不幸的是，美国没有足够的实验来提供政策指导。因此，我们必须依赖于实验盛行的案例的研究结果。希望从对欧洲不同项目的分析中获得的教训将对美国政策制定者有用，因为他们面临着类似的安全和经济挑战，越来越多的难民抵达我们的海岸。系统地评估过多的寻求庇护者和难民融合政策的影响，为一系列社会科学领域的现有移民研究提供重要贡献：1)它将先进的计量经济学和实验方法的范围扩展到一个新的政策领域，以便就融合政策的影响提供内部有效的证据；2)它通过纳入这些高度脆弱人口的政治和社会结果，促进了对政策影响的理解，超越了经济成功的影响。这两项贡献有助于对有利于寻求庇护者和难民融入社会的条件有一个基本的了解，而目前的学术和政策文献中都没有这种条件。

European governments are currently facing the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War. In 2014, Europe registered approximately 567,000 new asylum claims, a figure which has since been surpassed by the total intake between January and July of 2015. Given that the crisis in the Middle East shows no signs of abating, these population flows can be expected to continue, placing significant pressure on European governments. This massive influx of asylum seekers has resulted in severe political fallout in many European countries. Although refugee integration has been a long-standing and pressing goal, scholars and policymakers have strong opinions but little evidence on how best to bring it out about. This research will collect new evidence and apply innovative techniques to assess which policies promote the successful social, political, and economic integration of refugees into host countries and which measures are likely to fail or backfire. Germany is the focus of the study since it is the European country that has received by far the largest number of recent refugees. Using a mobile messaging application (WhatsApp) and working with local governments and NGOs, a large panel of recently arrived asylum seekers in Germany will be created to provide timely understanding of how policy parameters impact refugee integration. The distinguishing feature of our project is that we will provide the research and policy community with two important tools. First, for researchers we will test and assess a new panel recruitment and retention approach via WhatsApp that can be used with a highly mobile population. Second, for policymakers we will provide systematic information about the current situation and perspectives of asylum seekers in Europe. Longer-term the study will inform policy discussion by providing systematic evidence on the impact of asylum procedures and programs for the subsequent integration of refugees. Additionally, taking advantage of what we learn from Germany, we will be able to apply this knowledge to the US case. Unfortunately, there is insufficient experimentation in the US to allow for policy guidance. We must therefore rely on findings from cases where experimentation is prevalent. Hopefully, the lessons gleaned from the analysis of the varied programs in Europe will be useful for American policy makers as they confront similar security and economic challenges with increasing numbers of refugees arriving on our shores.Systematically evaluating the impact of a plethora of asylum seeker and refugee integration policies provides important contributions to existing immigration research across a range of social science fields: 1) it expands the scope of advanced econometric and experimental methods to a new policy area in order to produce internally valid evidence on the impact of integration policies; and 2) it advances understanding of the impact of policy beyond that of economic success by incorporating political and social outcomes for these highly vulnerable populations. These two contributions can help build a basic understanding of the conditions favorable for the integration of asylum seekers and refugees, which is currently absent from both the academic and policy literature.