Latest posts by Hans Blokland (see all)
- German bureaucracy in the integration of newcomers and how it can be reduced. - July 9, 2025
- Citizens’ dialogue in Paulinenaue once again well attended: the requirement to justify positions rationally is what unites us Europeans. - June 25, 2025
- New BAMF project launched by SSW: Building bridges, volunteering for migrants and against discrimination - June 19, 2025
At the end of 2024, there were approximately 3.5 million refugees living in Germany, including 1.2 million people from Ukraine. Around 20% of these people, or roughly 700,000 individuals, were housed in so-called Gemeinschaftsunterkünften (shared accommodation facilities). On average, around 200 people live together in these centers, sharing kitchens, toilets, and bathrooms. Although many of these Unterkünfte are classified as “Übergangswohnheime” (temporary accommodation), refugees and their children often stay in these environments for more than five years, which places a heavy burden on their mental and physical health and, consequently, their integration (see Blokland 2024: Teil II). A very large proportion of these accommodations are managed by private (profit or non-profit) institutions. It is estimated that there are more than 200 large and smaller operators active in Germany. The Serco Group (a British commercial enterprise), for example, manages 130 accommodations with 55,000 residents. The German Red Cross currently has between 200 and 400 shelters under its management. Other institutions active in this field include AWO, IB, Diakonie, PeWoBE, Living Quarter, ProShelter, and Campanet. Between 20 and 40 organizations are active in Brandenburg. The data are always estimates because there is little transparency (neither on the public nor on the private side) and because the market is highly dynamic, with companies constantly coming and going. Not only are companies being established, merged, and dissolved, but the contracts for managing accommodation are always relatively short-term, generally lasting two to three years. The suggestion is that this is a market in which companies compete with each other to deliver the best possible product. However, this supposed market force is illusory.
There is also considerable dissatisfaction among many professionals working in the integration sector with the existing system of tenders.
Tenders
As a rule, there are three parties involved in this system. First, a district administration, which, for example, in Teltow-Fläming (Brandenburg), puts out a tender for a transitional shelter every two years. This tender requires a two-year action plan that focuses on costs. Secondly, an organization such as the German Red Cross, the Internationale Bund, or Living Quarter GmbH that offers to operate the shelter during the contract period. And thirdly, an institution that owns the property in question and leases it to the second party. This could be the same district administration.
This system has several problems.
First of all, the contract term is so short that it makes little sense to invest in the residents and the social environment of the accommodation (like voluntary and civil society organizations, municipal institutions, companies). If the contract is lost, all these investments are largely wasted. This is one of the reasons why social workers often have little knowledge of who lives in their accommodation and what backgrounds, skills, and needs the people concerned have (see Blokland 2024: Part III). Furthermore, most of the facilities seem to be spaceships from Mars that have landed somewhere by chance and are largely isolated from their social environment. It is not worth investing time, energy, and money in relationships with local civic, private, and public organizations, even though such investments could significantly improve the integration of residents.
Secondly, more and more providers have entered the market who appear to be primarily driven by commercial motives and have no background or experience in social work. For example, one of the largest companies in this field is the family-owned European Homecare (https://www.eu-homecare.com/de/), which operates around 120 refugee centers and employs approximately 2,200 people. The company was one of the biggest winners of the refugee crisis. In 2016, it generated revenues of 277 million (compared to 39 million in 2014) and a profit of 32 million.[1] Since 2022, the company has been part of the Organization for Refugee Services (ORS Group) based in Zurich. The company operates in four countries: Italy, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The ORS Group is in turn part of the SERCO Group from the UK.[2] The commercial organizations involved may be cheaper in the short term, but the quality they offer is lower, partly because they are not strongly guided by knowledge, experience, ideas, values, and ideals in this field. In the longer term, this leads to higher social costs. The poorer and longer the integration process, the more expensive it is. However, these costs, which only become apparent in the long term, are borne by society.
Market and quality
In theory, the existence of several market players competing with each other in an open market could lead to higher service quality. This is because market participants could differ from one another in their ideas and strategies for accommodating and integrating refugees. These differing ideas and strategies could lead to differences in the quality of life in assisted accommodation and in the success of integration.
Various indicators can be used to assess the quality or success of the work in refugee centers. Of course, the short-term financial costs are important. How much does it cost to accommodate a person in a refugee shelter for a year and provide them with social workers and security personnel? However, in order to determine the long-term costs, other indicators must also be taken into account. The following indicators or parameters come to mind, for example:
- the length of stay in the accommodation (the shorter, the better);
- the number of people who are working, attending German courses, or completing vocational training;
- the German language skills acquired by residents from different backgrounds after one, two, or three years;
- the degree of participation of residents in social life outside the shared accommodation, expressed, for example, by their involvement in voluntary activities;
- the degree of participation of residents in life in the accommodation (and in its organization);
- the percentage of children who attend daycare and successfully complete secondary school;
- the residents’ assessment of their living conditions in the accommodation;
- the percentage of residents who would like to move to other accommodation;
- the number of people suffering from mental and physical ailments; and so on.
However, no data is collected on all these and other possible indicators. This is not done by the responsible authorities nor by the organizations that manage the accommodations for longer, mostly shorter, periods of time. The only indicator available is the financial cost, and this only in the short term.
Refugee accommodation operators are therefore not assessed on their results. There is not even any check to see whether they actually implement the plans they submit in their project applications. Their websites contain grandiose texts about how well they look after their residents.[3] However, there is no way of measuring the extent to which these texts correspond to reality. It is all about the cheapest offer, and in order to save costs, according to statements of both refugees and staff, more and more residents are being offered fewer and fewer services in the accommodations: There is less and less staff, who are less and less present and also less and less qualified. This naturally causes higher costs in the long term, but by the time these become apparent, the operators and the politicians responsible will have long since disappeared from the scene.
As a result, there is no truly functioning market and therefore hardly any quality guarantees.
The targeted design of a market
If there is no functioning market that forces suppliers to deliver high-quality products, the state should intervene. After all, it is the only remaining actor capable of doing so. This is because the direct consumers of the products, namely the refugees, who in a normal market would have the option of switching to other suppliers, have no choice: decisions about where they should stay are made for them from above (BAMF, immigration authorities, job centers).
Responsibility does not necessarily mean that refugee shelters are managed by public authorities, even if there is little to argue against it. After all, prisons in Germany, unlike in the United States or the United Kingdom, are also state-run. There is no reason to believe that prisons in the United States function better than those in Germany. Public institutions are politically controlled. Commercial entities that are independent of politics and operate in a dysfunctional or non-existent “market” are not subject to any control.
If the decision is nevertheless made to have public services provided by private providers, the state must create a market in which competition is based on parameters that are truly relevant. I have mentioned examples of such parameters above. In order to enable this competition, data relating to these parameters must be collected. How long do people live in a shelter on average? What is their language level after three years? How many people work or go to school? Et cetera. Once you have answers to these questions, you can evaluate the quality of the products offered by different providers. You can hold the organizations involved accountable for their products. A real market with the associated competition can emerge. However, this market must be consciously shaped by the actor who remains responsible for the end result at all times: the democratically controlled state.
In all this, tenders and evaluations must not be determined primarily by short-term cost considerations. Firstly, because the values and ideals underlying the admission of refugees cannot be expressed in euros alone. Secondly, because integration is a very lengthy process in which numerous parameters play a role. Achieving the goal of integration requires long-term investment. These necessary investments are overlooked when organizations are evaluated solely on the basis of their immediate costs. The end result will most likely be that the costs, both for the migrants and for the host society, will be much higher than necessary.
Anmerkungen
[1] (https://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/news/fluechtlingsheime–umstrittener-betreiber-macht-millionengewinn-7925040.html.
[2] https://www.eu-homecare.com/de/betreuungsdienstleister-ors-und-european-homecare-wollen-sich-kuenftig-gemeinsam-als-markt-und-qualitaetsfuehrer-praesentieren/.
[3] Living Quarter reports: “At the dynamic heart of our company, a heart is awakening, driven by deeply rooted and fundamental values. It is a carefully crafted network that is consciously and professionally shaped by every team member at every significant moment of our interactive collaboration… At Living Quarter, innovation and quality are at the heart of our work. As experts in the social services sector and facility management, we rely on advanced technologies and digital solutions. Our team, characterized by strong values such as trust and reliability, works every day to reshape the social sector. Through our expansion, we offer highly qualified services in various states and counties, always with the goal of strengthening safety, comfort, and community in our society.” ( https://www.livingquarter.de/) See also: https://www.eu-homecare.com/de/dienstleistungen/wie-und-was-leisten-wir/.