EU Freedom of Movement
The largest migrant group in Germany to date is European internal migrants. Immigration is determined by the right to move freely, stay and work in all EU Member States.
In contrast to so-called guest worker migration, this phenomenon is labelled as "new labour market migration". A large part of EU internal migration is explained by the extremely divergent labour market situation between the countries of origin and Germany. Most new immigrants in Germany come from the new EU member states (56 percent). In 2014, almost 1.5 million migrants came to Germany, of which 830,000 were from EU member states. Until 2014, Poles were the largest group in net immigration; the majority of immigrants currently come from Romania. Immigration from Bulgaria is also growing steadily. The migratory movements from the southern EU member states have developed differently: While the number of immigrants from Italy continues to rise, immigration from Spain and Greece is decreasing. (Source: Federal Statistics Office, Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit, Vorläufiger Bericht 2014).
Migration research is concerned, among other things, with explanatory models regarding the determinants of new immigration as well as with the analysis of migration trends and the situation of new immigrants in Germany and each of the individual cities. Only a few studies have empirically worked to describe the migration motives of new immigrants, their situation in the country of origin and Germany, their educational background and their labour market integration in Germany.
Minor – Projektkontor für Bildung und Forschung e.V. in Berlin, which implements the IQ Competence Centre on Immigration, has analysed both immigration from Spain and Italy after 2008 within the context of a study on behalf of the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) as well as a study on behalf of the Senate of Berlin on immigration to Berlin from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and France. In these surveys on new immigration, the typology of the new European immigration is made visible: Young, mobile, usually very well educated people whose overriding motivation is work. Push factors that are the initial reason for migrating often include dissatisfaction with the situation in the countries of origin as well as poor working conditions or unemployment. A large number of new immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania remain in Germany for less than five years on average and those from Poland even remain for less than one year. In addition to this, the immigrant respondents from Spain and Italy for the most part still do not know how long they want to stay in Germany for. Therefore, another phenomenon of new immigration from the EU can be spoken of: Migration is first tried and tested.
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Labour migration from third countries
