Do immigrants have to learn German in Germany? – DW – 10/12/2024

Dulaj Madhushan hates dog food the most. Carrying dozens of 15-kilogram packages from trucks to the conveyor belt at Amazon’s Berlin sortation center is the most unpleasant part of their nine-hour shifts.

Even more irritating for the 29-year-old Sri Lankan is that he has other ambitions for his life in Germany. He has a bus driver’s license in his home country and is tired of seeing articles in local newspapers about how BVG, the German capital’s public transport operator, is so understaffed that it is struggling to fill its schedules.

Three months after finally getting her 10-year residence permit (thanks to her partner being an EU citizen), Madhushan is still no closer to driving a bus.

Madhushan’s first few months in Germany, he said, were very stressful. “I thought it would be easy, but it wasn’t,” he told DW. “I need to do professional training and the language at the same time and I can’t find anywhere to do that.” So far, his efforts have been frustrating – the man at the BVG office he visited spoke little English and simply told him to check the BVG recruitment website for information (which is only in German).

Madhushan eventually discovered that he needed intermediate-level German to work as a bus driver, but he could not find any information on the BVG website about whether BVG offered these courses or how he could go about getting his Sri Lankan driver’s license recognized. Lanka in Germany. . In a statement to DW, the BVG stated that the recruitment of foreign workers was “on the agenda” and that German courses were available for those who already had qualifications.

“Other concepts are currently being developed,” said a BVG spokesperson. “Together with our partners, we are recruiting qualified foreign workers already living in Berlin and, together with our partner, we are training them for the job of bus drivers.”

Madhushan’s trip to the job center was also difficult. Although the employee he was dealing with spoke fluent English, she told him he should bring a German speaker with him to translate. Faced with these frustrations, he chose the easiest and fastest route to paid work: the Amazon sorting center – through a leading European recruitment agency – which does not require German language skills or any qualifications.

No Germans at work

There are practically no Germans in the huge warehouse, Madhushan said, and even those who are there speak mostly English – as it is the language everyone more or less understands.

“Even my supervisors are Afghans, Syrians or Pakistanis, so they speak English in meetings,” he said. All other workers, mainly from India or Africa, speak their shared language. Would learning German do you any good at work? “No, not there,” said Madhushan.

This is a fairly typical experience, said Britta Schneider, professor of language use and migration at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). “There is a big gap between monolingual public discourse in Germany – you have to learn German, and if you don’t it means you don’t want to integrate – and practice, where it often turns out that you don’t. I need some German,” she told DW.

The result, Schneider said, is that many immigrants have little incentive to learn German — especially because official German courses offered at adult education centers are so time-consuming that it is difficult to hold down a job at the same time. In Berlin, for example, a course is offered consisting of six modules of 100 hours each, taught in blocks of four hours, up to five days a week. This would exclude Madhushan unless he quits his job.

The lack of support in the German job market has not gone unnoticed among immigrants: an OECD survey released in January asked skilled workers already in Germany or those interested in coming which areas they would like to see more support. The top two answers were finding a job and learning German.

The same survey found a large difference between expectations and reality among foreign workers. When asked whether it was important to learn German to find a suitable job in the country, 52% said yes before arriving, but 65% thought so when they arrived.

There also appears to be a feeling among foreign workers that they are less welcome than they thought they would be. When asked whether Germany had a “real interest in hiring foreign workers,” 55% said yes while they were still abroad, but only 33% agreed when they lived in Germany.

Multilingual society

The insistence on integration into society – supported by political discourse in Germany (and Europe in general), where nationalism increasingly drives political debate – is at odds with what Schneider called a “social reality that is multilingual, where German does not always play an important role.” paper.”

She also questioned the assumption that states should be monolingual and that sharing a single language is essential for social cohesion. “It’s not really justifiable given that we have a shortage of skilled labor,” she said.

There is evidence that Germany is struggling to compete with other nations when it comes to attracting foreign workers. International expat network InterNations conducted research into the most attractive countries for foreign workers and found that Germany ranked 50th out of 53 nations. Although the job market offers many opportunities, the survey found that expats have difficulty settling in. “Expats find it very difficult to make friends, find housing and deal with the lack of digital infrastructure in Germany,” the survey concluded.

2023 OECD “Talent Attractiveness” Index was a little kinder, ranking Germany 15th out of 38 – but still behind rivals such as the US, UK and Canada.

Still, English appears to be becoming a more important language in the German job market – especially in big cities like Berlin. The German Startup Association found this year that the proportion of startups in the capital where the working language is English increased from 42.3% to 55.8%.

But this, of course, is not true across Germany or in sectors where the country needs more workers, as highlighted by Bernd Meyer, professor of intercultural communication at the University of Mainz. “In care work, or in hospitals, it is not possible without knowledge of German: healthcare professionals need to be able to speak to each other, to patients, to doctors,” he told DW.

But he also said that German society needs to become more multilingual. “Authorities, doctors, social institutions need to be able to speak several languages ​​because the population is becoming more multilingual,” he said.

There has been some progress in this regard: German employment agencies are now specifically employing more people who speak other languages ​​– especially Turkish and Russian.

Schneider also believes that companies could be more proactive, for example by offering short-term German courses tailored to the jobs they need to fill. This would save immigrants several hundred hours of general language courses before they can even look for work.

As for Madhushan, learning German is essentially imperative if he wants to be a bus driver, although it appears he will have to finance it himself – probably with the earnings he earns from Amazon.

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg

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