Page 7 - IO1-Report

KA201 - Strategic Partnerships for School Education
The Universal Language of Mathematics (2018-1-TR01-KA201-059704)

1. Germany: situation and good practices

1.1. Overview of flight and migration in Germany

Statistics on migration in general show that Germany is a migration society which can look back on a
long history of migration (Hanewinkel/Oltmer 2018b). People on the move since ever shaped societies
th
in the German-speaking area (such as religious refugees during the 17 century, emigration waves to
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America in the 19 century or countless refugees during and after World War II) and high immigration
numbers are reported since many decades and centuries. (ibid) Nevertheless, the federal Republic of
Germany, founded in 1949, as a country of (im-)migration was officially recognised very late by the
German politics. It was in the late 1990s for the first time that the German government has defined
Germany as “country of immigration” and postulated ‘integration of migrants’ as a cross-sectional task
for the German society as a whole. (Hanewinkel/Oltmer 2018b)

In 2019, 21.2 million people have had a migrant background , representing 26.0% of the population in
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Germany. (DeStatis 2020) The majority of immigrants has moved to Germany from another European
country in 2019 (around 66 percent). Almost 14 percent moved from Asia, about 5 percent from America
and about 4 percent from Africa. (Mediendienst Integration 2020) This means that more than half of all
immigrants living in Germany were EU citizens in 2019 - most often, immigrants had Romanian, Polish
or Bulgarian citizenship. The majority of people who migrate to Germany come to work or study. (ibid)
In terms of asylum and flight, Germany is among the most important destination countries in Europe
for people seeking refuge. From 2008 on, the number of asylum applications in Germany constantly
rose. (Hanewinkel/Oltmer 2018) Compared with the 27 other EU member states in 2016, Germany has
accepted more asylum seekers in absolute numbers as well as in relation to the size of the population.
(Hanewinkel/Oltmer 2018) In 2015, the number of asylum applications has reached a new high with
approximately 476,000 initial and repeated applications; this peak was significantly surpassed in 2016
with more than 746,000 applications:

2 According to the definition, a person has a ‘migrant background’ if she or he or at least one parent did not acquire German
citizenship by birth.
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