The Social Integration of Syrian Refugees in Germany

How successful have efforts been to socially integrate Syrian migrants in Germany? What factors influence social integration? Together with researchers from Harvard and Meta, Theresa Kuchler and Johannes Stroebel address these questions in a new research paper working with de-identified data from Facebook. They find that Syrians in Germany generally have low levels of social integration compared to German natives, measured
by the number of Facebook connections/groups and content posted in German. In rural regions social integration is higher than in more urban regions. Finally, thehe degree of integration in a region is driven by the
local environment, less by the behavior of local natives or the present Syrian population.