Labour Market Integration and Public Perceptions of Immigrants: A Comparison between Germany and Spain During the Economic Crisis Dirk Godenau, Dita Vogel, Vesela Kovacheva, Yan Wu Abstract: Since the start of the global economic downturn, Germany and Spain have experienced highly-divergent impacts of the crisis on the labour market in general and on immigrant workers in particular. This can be mainly explained by looking at the economic growth patterns prior to the crisis. Spain’s higher, more la- bour-intensive growth was enabled by growth in the labour supply that was fuelled by immigration and fostered by a de facto permissive immigration policy, while re- strictive migration policy prevented growth in labour supply in Germany and en- couraged more capital-intensive growth in which both Germans with a low level of skills, and immigrants in particular, found it diffi cult to integrate. We therefore argue that institutional features of the labour market promoted these patterns. The high level of importance of the temporary and informal labour market segments in Spain which were hit hardest by the crisis placed immigrant workers and young workers in a vulnerable position. The economic crisis has made parts of the population more sceptical about im- migration in both countries. However, there appear to be no links between the se- verity of the crisis and public debates on migration. Although Spain was defi nitely hit harder by the crisis than Germany, and immigrants were affected more severely, public debates on migration and integration issues seem to be at least as fi erce in Germany as in Spain. The legacy of past migrations and migration policies exerts a more signifi cant infl uence on the public perception of migration as a risk than eco- nomic factors do. Keywords: Immigration · Labour market · Economic crisis · Germany · Spain 1 Introduction The global economic crisis affected countries all over the world, and particularly im- pacted European states with regard to their immigrant populations. However, the ef- fects differed from one country to another – Spain is among those economies which Comparative Population Studies – Zeitschrift für Bevölkerungswissenschaft Vol. 37, 1-2 (2012): 55-76 (Date of release: 14.06.2012) © Federal Institute for Population Research 2012 URL: www.comparativepopulationstudies.de DOI: 10.4232/10.CPoS-2011-13en URN: urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-13en1 • Dirk Godenau, Dita Vogel, Vesela Kovacheva, Yan Wu56 were affected more severely, and Germany is among those leading the recovery. In 2010, two years after the outbreak of the global economic crisis in the autumn of 2008, Germany is showing a relatively favourable employment situation, with only 7 % unemployment, while Spain’s unemployment rate tops 20 %. The difference is even more marked with regard to foreign nationals: Germany registers decreas- ing numbers of unemployed foreign nationals, while in Spain these numbers have multiplied. At the same time, a heated debate about integration issues is going on in Germany. Economic meltdown in Spain seems to have swept immigration topics out of the media, and the debate on integration issues is only an emerging topic in the public domain. In this paper, we sketch the differing effects of the economic crisis on the labour markets in Spain and Germany and explore how it affects immigrant labour market integration and the discussion on immigrants in public debates, referring to Eurostat data and published studies. Labour market developments are conceptualized as the interplay between labour supply and labour demand as infl uenced by institutional structures, with labour supply being infl uenced among other things by immigration which is enabled by migration policies, and labour demand being infl uenced by global and domestic demand for products and services. We show, fi rstly, how production and employment developed during the last decade, which encompassed a boom period and a decline period (section 2), be- fore we highlight the impact of restrictive policies on migration (section 3). We then sketch relevant institutional and sectoral features of the labour market comparative- ly (section 4) in order to explain the general patterns and in particular the differential impact of the economic crisis on the labour market integration of foreign nationals (section 5). Lastly, we question the existence of a close relationship between eco- nomic crisis and public debates on immigration (section 6). 2 Development of growth and employment levels For years, the German economy had lower growth rates than the EU average, and considerably lower growth rates than the Spanish economy. Growth rates con- verged from the last quarter of 2008 onwards (which we consider as the beginning of the global economic crisis). Declines in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of around 4 % were observed on average in the European Union, Germany and Spain in 2009. Estimates for 2010 indicate a quicker recovery in Germany than in Spain, and Euro- stat forecasts that this trend will persist (see Fig. 1). Behind the growth rates, there are widely-diverging growth patterns in terms of employment and productivity. Prior to the crisis, the Spanish economy grew al- most exclusively through expanding employment (annual average of 5.3 % during 1998-2007), creating 6.5 million additional jobs between 1998 and 2007, while real labour productivity per hour worked expanded by an average of only 0.9 % (Gode- nau 2010: 6-10). Germany’s GDP growth added 2.7 million jobs during the same period (0.8 %), but with a much greater increase in productivity (1.6 %). The crisis reduced real labour productivity in Germany due to lower hours worked by the aver- Labour Market Integration and Public Perceptions of Immigrants • 57 age employee. Measured productivity in Spain grew as the destruction of employ- ment was more intense than the reduction in output. The different patterns of growth can be partly attributed to different sectoral growth patterns. Table 1 shows the sectoral distribution of employment growth (see Table 1). The economic sectors contributed differently towards growth at the beginning of the millennium, and they have been affected differently by the international crisis. Construction and real estate activities in Spain lost nearly a quarter of their total employment between 2008 and 2009. Prices and production in these sectors had been infl ated, creating a ‘bubble’. The bursting of the bubble marked the start of the crisis. Agriculture, manufacturing and ‘other services’ are among the sectors that shed large numbers of workers in Germany. In general, sectors with the most considerable employment growth before the crisis lost most employment during the crisis in both countries. Fig. 1: Growth rates of GDP volume in Germany and Spain (percentage year- on-year change) -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 (e ) 20 11 (e ) EU (27 countries) Germany Spain Percent Note: (e) – 2010 and 2011 estimates Source: Eurostat National Accounts • Dirk Godenau, Dita Vogel, Vesela Kovacheva, Yan Wu58 Tab. 1: Employment shares and growth rates in Germany and Spain* Share 2007 Growth 1998-2007 Sectors (NACE 1)1 Germany Spain Germany Spain Total – all NACE 1 activities 100.0 100.0 7.5 47.4 Agriculture, forestry and fishing 2.2 4.5 -13.1 -13.0 Industry (except construction) 23.2 16.0 -2.4 14.6 Construction 6.6 13.3 -19.4 97.0 Services 67.9 66.2 16.3 57.8 Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles and personal and household goods 14.0 15.4 4.8 37.4 Hotels and restaurants 3.8 7.1 27.5 72.1 Transport, storage and communication 5.6 5.8 12.3 43.1 Financial intermediation 3.4 2.5 3.9 44.4 Real estate, renting and business activities 10.3 9.9 52.8 119.8 Public administration and defence; compulsory social security 7.6 6.1 -5.0 42.1 Education; health; other service activities; activities of households; extra-territorial organizations 23.3 19.5 21.7 61.1 Education 5.9 5.5 14.4 34.8 Health and social work 11.4 6.0 28.2 65.1 Other community, social and personal service activities 5.4 4.2 15.4 65.1 Activities of households 0.5 3.8 55.5 106.9 Share 2009 Growth 2008-2009 Sectors (NACE 2) Germany Spain Germany Spain Total – All NACE 2 activities 100.0 100.0 -0.2 -6.8 Agriculture, forestry and fishing 1.7 4.2 -6.0 -4.0 Industry (except construction) 22.1 14.7 -2.6 -13.3 Construction 6.6 10.0 0.1 -23.0 Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles 13.5 15.7 -0.5 -7.1 Transportation and storage 4.7 4.8 -1.2 -5.6 Accommodation and food service activities 3.9 7.5 2.1 -2.2 Information and communication 3.2 2.7 -0.4 -7.8 Financial and insurance activities 3.5 2.5 0.6 -6.6 Real estate activities 0.7 0.5 23.4 -23.2 Professional, scientific and technical activities 4.9 4.5 3.3 -2.7 Administrative and support service activities 5.0 4.7 4.5 -3.1 Public administration and defence; compulsory social security 7.2 7.2 0.2 7.1 Education 6.2 6.1 1.3 1.0 Human health and social work activities 11.8 7.0 3.6 4.9 Arts, entertainment and recreation 1.4 1.6 0.6 -1.7 Other service activities 3.0 2.2 -13.6 -1.6 Activities of households as employers; undifferentiated goods- and services-producing activities of households for own use 0.5 3.8 -6.0 -3.6 * Comparison of employment of all persons age 15 years and older as measured by Eurostat in Labour Force Surveys 1 Different classifi cations due to changes in Statistical Classifi cation of Economic Activi- ties in the EU (NACE 1 —> NACE 2) Source: own calculation based on Eurostat Labour Force Surveys Labour Market Integration and Public Perceptions of Immigrants • 59 3 Development of migration under the infl uence of migration policies Both Germany and Spain are characterized by a progressively ageing work force. Spain still has a slightly younger population, but fertility reduction has been pro- found, and has placed Spain among the countries with the lowest fertility rate in the world (less than 1.2 children per woman 1995-2000), despite a small rise observed in 2006 (1.35 children per woman) (Roig Vila/Castro Martín 2007: 351). Educational lev- els are high and continue to grow among the younger population in both countries, conditioning rising wage and employment expectations according to educational level. Both countries continuously had a large number of unemployed persons, but encountered considerable diffi culties when it came to organising the labour market integration of these spare workers. In such a context, the exceptional Spanish employment growth at the beginning of the millennium would not have been possible without immigration, which was enabled by a de facto permissive immigration policy. New legal immigration op- portunities for gaining access to the labour market were opened up by the immigra- tion law of 2004 through the introduction of annual quotas for labour immigration. During the extraordinary regularisation campaign of 2005, about 692,000 irregular migrants were regularized. In spite of somewhat increasing efforts to combat the shadow economy, the informal sector is still relatively large, offering employment opportunities for irregular migrants. Spanish policies towards irregular residents are characterized by focusing on preventing new entries over the borders and se- curing migrants’ basic rights such as healthcare and schooling for minors already in the country. During the crisis, the Spanish Government introduced ‘pay-to-go’ programmes targeting third-country nationals, thereby subsidizing the return of unemployed im- migrants and promising them favourable return options after fi ve years, but pro- gramme take-up was limited to a small number of individuals.1 Recruitment of new foreign workers has been reduced by cutting the quota in the immigration law and suspending the bilateral hiring agreements with countries of origin (Ferrero-Turrión/ López-Sala 2010: 174). In contrast, German migration policies did not allow for growth in the labour supply through immigration in the past. The 2005 Immigration Act (‘Zuwanderungs- gesetz’) provided a more consistent, simplifi ed framework for immigration, but it basically consolidated the previous restrictive policies with regard to labour market access for regular migrants. New opportunities were opened up only for highly- skilled immigrants with job offers involving high earnings and for foreign gradu- ates of German universities. The Labour Migration Control Act (‘Arbeitsmigrations- steuerungsgesetz’) of 2009 demonstrates the Government’s efforts in calling for 1 1,821 immigrants participated in the Voluntary Return Programme for Immigrants in Socially Precarious Situations (PREVIE) in 2008, and the number increased to 3,297 in 2009. The Pro- gramme for the Early Payment of Unemployment Benefi ts to Foreigners (APRE) was taken up by 8,724 applicants in 2009, plus 1,581 relatives who accompanied these people back home (Ferrero-Turrión/López-Sala 2010: 172). • Dirk Godenau, Dita Vogel, Vesela Kovacheva, Yan Wu60 action to make sure that the ‘best brains’ are brought into the German labour mar- ket. According to this legal amendment, access to the labour market was facilitated both for highly-skilled workers from the new Member States (EU-12), which were still subject to transitional restrictions, and also for specifi ed classes of third-coun- try nationals (Koehler et al. 2010: 29). Efforts to combat employment in the shadow economy were consolidated. In 2004, labour market control was integrated in the ‘Finanzkontrolle Schwarzarbeit’ (directly translated as Financial Control of Illicit Employment), when civil inspection units became part of the police-like inspection units of the customs offi ce. Being already quite restrictive, migration policies did not change during the crisis.2 The two countries implemented different policies with regard to intra-EU labour migration for the new Member States of the European Union. Germany made full use of transitional periods for seven years, restricting access to the labour market Fig. 2: Net immigration in Germany and Spain, 1998 to 2008 -100,000 0 100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000 500,000 600,000 700,000 800,000 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Germany Spain People Source: Eurostat International Migration and Asylum Statistics 2 For German and Spanish reactions to the crisis, see also the “Ad-Hoc Query on the actions/ policy measures taken in migration management as the reaction to global crisis” of 22 July 2009 http://emn.sarenet.es/Downloads/prepareShowFiles.do?entryTitle=4.%20EMN%20Ad- Hoc%20Queries Labour Market Integration and Public Perceptions of Immigrants • 61 for immigrants from the new EU Member States in the enlargement waves of 2004 (eight out of ten new Member States) and 2007 (Romania and Bulgaria). Spain used a two-year transitional period in both cases, and has thus created unrestricted ac- cess to the labour market for citizens from the new EU Member States since 2009, but has since reversed its position. As a consequence of these different migration policies, immigration has taken on distinctly divergent features in the recent past. Immigration grew strongly in Spain during the economic boom, and particularly between 2000 and 2007, while Germany’s net immigration was exceptionally low, in comparison both to Spain and to earlier periods of Germany’s post-war migration history (see Fig. 2). The percentage of the foreign population in Spain has been higher than that in Germany since 2006 due to the recent massive infl ux (see Fig. 3). Germany has ex- perienced peak immigration on various occasions in the past, and has consolidated a permanent presence of foreign nationals (Loeffelholz 2002). It should be noted that the Spanish fi gures also include a large share of the irreg- ular resident population. Municipal registration is possible regardless of migration status, and enables access to be had to basic healthcare services, and may serve as a proof of residence in case of a regularisation campaign (González-Enríquez 2009). In Germany, municipal registration is only possible for regular migrants (Cyrus Fig. 3: Percentage of the foreign population in Germany and Spain, 2000-2009 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Germany Spain Percent Source: own calculation based on Eurostat International Migration and Asylum Statistics • Dirk Godenau, Dita Vogel, Vesela Kovacheva, Yan Wu62 2009: 9). However, estimates indicate low numbers and a declining trend for the ir- regular resident population in Germany. If we recalculate the percentage of foreign nationals in Germany for 2009 to include the maximum estimate of irregular mi- grants of 330,000 by Vogel and Gelbrich (2010), the percentage of foreign nationals in the population increases only slightly, from 8.8 to 9.1 %. The immigration profi les of the two countries are different. Spain’s immigration is dominated by labour motives and migrants of non-European origin (with Romania forming the most relevant exception). The settlement duration of most immigrants is still short; activity rates are high and education levels relatively low (at least in terms of recognized qualifi cations). Among non-European origins, the Latin Ameri- can countries have been dominant, and language barriers are low in most of these cases. In Germany’s immigrant population, most foreign nationals have been resi- dents for a longer time and come from non-German-speaking countries. Former im- migration peaks in the 1960s (migration from Turkey) and the late 1980s to the early 1990s (migration from Eastern Europe) constitute the principal factors infl uencing the current population of foreign citizenship. While both countries’ immigration consists of infl ows mainly triggered by la- bour demand, family reunifi cation, educational purposes and asylum-seeking, it is in Spain that labour demand has played and continues to play a more important role (see Table 2). 4 Institutional structures of the labour market Labour market outcomes are a result of the interplay between supply and demand in a market that is heavily infl uenced by the institutional features of the labour market.3 3 The institutional settings of national labour markets can introduce signifi cant differences in terms of how supply and demand will interact and produce market outcomes (Bassanini/Duval 2006; Furceri/Mourougane 2009). The most relevant aspects are unemployment benefi ts, tax wedges, wage bargaining systems, active labour market programmes, minimum wage fl oors and short-time working schemes (Jean/Jiménez 2007). Labour market outcomes for migrants are also infl uenced by these general institutional aspects (Jean et al. 2007). Tab. 2: Valid permits by reason in Germany and Spain, 2009 (%) Reason Germany Spain Total 100.0 100.0 Family reasons 36.7 19.7 Educational reasons 3.2 1.4 Remunerated activities reasons 1.8 29.8 Other reasons 58.3 49.1 Source: own calculation based on Eurostat International Migration and Asylum Statistics Labour Market Integration and Public Perceptions of Immigrants • 63 The State infl uences conditions by legislating minimum conditions and providing (or not providing) effective institutions for the enforcement of such conditions, as well as by providing unemployment benefi t schemes and active labour market poli- cies. In addition, the strength and organisational structures of trade unions shape the wage-setting process and infl uence whether employees can fi nd help in case their employment rights have been violated. The combined effect of such factors is crucial for labour market outcomes, although it is debatable as to which features in the complex interaction are most important. The OECD developed a summary indicator of employment protection strictness, including 21 basic items which can be classifi ed in three main areas: (i) protection of regular workers against individual dismissal; (ii) regulation of temporary forms of employment; and (iii) specifi c requirements for collective dismissals. The informa- tion refers to employment protection provided through legislation and as a result of enforcement processes. Both Germany and Spain reduced their levels of protection strictness during the nineties, but still differ from less highly-regulated economies such as the United States. The United States show the lowest value in this indicator among OECD countries in 2008 (0.85), while Spain (3.11) has a slightly higher level of protection than Germany (2.63). This latter difference is due to stricter regula- tion of temporary forms of employment in Spain than in Germany, and not to the protection of permanent workers against (individual) dismissal or specifi c require- ments for collective dismissal. Although temporary workers may be protected ef- fectively during their contracts, this does not protect workers from unemployment when their contract runs out in a period of employment reduction. This has major implications for understanding the different effects had by the crisis in the German and the Spanish labour markets respectively.4 To explain such differences, we propose to conceptualise the labour market as consisting of three segments,5 with considerably higher entry barriers between segments than within segments: The • permanent segment, characterized by permanent contracts. This is dominated by a high proportion of relatively well-skilled, well-paid jobs, many of which are in manufacturing and the public service. Older employ- ees dominate, either because they acquired permanent contracts before the liberalisation of the labour market, or because temporary entry-level jobs lead to permanent employment. 4 As Bentolila et al. (2010: 322) point out, “there are good reasons for suspecting that this EPS index, based as it is on legal norms and not on usual application, is misleading in the Spanish case. The de facto employment protection strictness in temporary employment is much lower in Spain than in France, while the opposite applies to EPS in permanent employment” [trans- lation by the authors]. They add (p. 323) that in Spain “there are no restrictions de facto: The authorities hardly supervise whether fi rms comply with established conditions for temporary contracts” [translation by the authors]. 5 The degree of segmentation is often referred to in discussions about these issues as ‘dualism’, given that only two segments are differentiated (Jean et al. 2007: 22). We prefer to speak of labour market segmentation rather than of dualism. • Dirk Godenau, Dita Vogel, Vesela Kovacheva, Yan Wu64 The • temporary segment, characterized by fi xed-term contracts. This in- cludes entry-level jobs in all sectors, and is specifi cally important in sectors such as the services, construction and agriculture, where wage and labour conditions are generally less favourable than in manufacturing and the pub- lic service. As new entrants to the labour market, younger employees and migrants are overrepresented. The • informal segment, characterized by the absence of formal contracts. This is dominated by low-paid jobs requiring low skill levels, mainly in con- struction, agriculture and services, with a considerable proportion of domes- tic work in private households, virtually all of which is part of the informal economy. Spain and Germany differ considerably with regard to the importance of these labour market segments. The size of the informal economy is diffi cult to measure, but there are some indications that it is bigger in Spain than that in Germany.6 Tem- porary employment in Spain was more than twice that in Germany in 2006 (34.1 as against 14.5 % of all employees). The percentage declined sharply in Spain to about 25 %, indicating that net job losses were much more pronounced in the temporary segment. The percentage remained constant in Germany, this possibly being ex- plained by the fact that job losses in the temporary sector balanced with employers’ reluctance to commit themselves to new permanent contracts due to the crisis (see Fig. 4). Job losses in the permanent segment in Germany were mitigated by short-time working schemes. Such programmes give incentives to employers to adjust to tem- porarily lower production levels by cutting the numbers of hours worked instead of cutting the numbers of persons employed (OECD 2010). Such programmes are highly effective when it comes to their mitigating effects when lower production levels are really temporary as expected, but they may also delay the impact of the crisis and make it more persistent (Duval et al. 2007: 25). As export production soon recovered in the crisis, short-time work subsidy schemes are considered to have worked well in this crisis in Germany (Myunghee Kim 2010: 93). While 1.5 million workers were in short-time working schemes by May 2009, their number decreased to 0.8 million by December the same year (Statistisches Bundesamt 2010). Labour market segmentation also indicates that the economic recession af- fected the gender composition of the migrant workforce differently. Researchers pointed out in a recent IOM report (Koehler et al. 2010) that male-dominated sectors such as construction (in the temporary or informal segment) have seen a rising un- employment rate, while more female-dominated sectors such as healthcare (in the permanent segment) still demand continuing infl ows of labour. As a consequence, more women than men immigrated to EU countries during the economic crisis. The 6 There are different indicators of the share accounted for by the informal economy. Unfortu- nately, there are reliability problems with all the indicators, and many indicators are available for either Spain or Germany, but not for both. See Andrews et al. for a discussion of measure- ment issues and the available indicators (2011). Labour Market Integration and Public Perceptions of Immigrants • 65 percentage of female foreign workers among the total foreign workforce rose in Spain from 49 % to 53 % between 2007 and 2009 (Koehler et al. 2010: 21), while in Germany the high growth rates of unemployment are in those traditionally strong German industries (such as electrical and automobile manufacturing) in the perma- nent segment which are dominated by a native male workforce. Consequently, the German government subsidized a job protection programme targeting this group (Koehler et al. 2010). Meanwhile, it is also suggested that migrant workers adjust to the worsening employment situation by switching to other labour market segments. Migrant construction workers were believed to seek employment in the self-em- ployed informal segment in Spain, which led to a 15 % increase in the labour force in agriculture and services in 2009 compared to that of 2008 (Koehler et al. 2010: 21). Immigrant integration policies in the labour market, defi ned as specifi c policies promoting labour market integration (for example courses for occupational skill ad- justment), have not been analysed in detail for this article. Although the arguments that have been put forward indicate the strong presence of other factors than in- tegration policies, integration policies may play a signifi cant role in the aftermath of the crisis. Economic restructuring takes place more rapidly during an economic crisis, and immigrants who came to fi ll job vacancies with lower skill requirements Fig. 4: Temporary employees as a percentage of the total number of employees in Germany and Spain, 1998-2009 (%) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Germany Spain Percent Source: Eurostat Labour Force Surveys • Dirk Godenau, Dita Vogel, Vesela Kovacheva, Yan Wu66 may fi nd it diffi cult to adjust to changing labour markets. In addition, new immi- grants continue to arrive during the crisis for reasons such as family unifi cation. Experts warn that the timing of such immigration causes a lasting ‘scarring effect’ as skills deteriorate if new immigrants do not fi nd immediate access to the labour market (Papademetriou et al. 2010: 16). For them, integration programmes are of major importance. As a consequence of the fi scal consolidation born out of the cri- sis, many public services and also integration programmes are reduced. The Span- ish Government cut the national budget dedicated to integration policies by 50 % between 2009 and 2010 (Ferrero-Turrión/López-Sala 2010: 179). 5 Labour market integration of immigrants Labour market integration implies economic convergence between the native and foreign populations. Only employment and unemployment are used as indicators in this brief overview. Foreigners are usually harder struck in times of economic recession than natives. Among migrants, recent entrants to the labour market are usually more strongly af- fected by economic downturns, and this is more the case if recent entrants are only offered temporary jobs. This is the case in Spain, where many recently arrived mi- grants were offered temporary jobs and lost them during the crisis because a large share of the employment adjustments operated through the temporary segment of the market. Figure 5 shows in comparative terms how employment of own nationals and foreign nationals (including EU citizens) has developed in Germany and Spain since the late 1990s. The fi gure shows that employment growth was positive in both countries from 1998 to 2007, with a higher intensity in Spain. While only 14 % of employment growth in Germany went to foreigners, this proportion was 39 % in Spain. The of- fi cial estimation of the Spanish Government (Ofi cina Económica del Presidente de Gobierno 2006) shows that immigration was responsible for 40 % of GDP growth between 2001 and 2005, and also contributed to employment growth among na- tionals. The crisis reduced the employment of nationals in Spain to 2004 levels, while in Germany employment of nationals started to grow from 2004 onwards. The differences during the last phase of the crisis are striking, and are featured separately in Figure 6. The economic crisis reduced employment in both countries, at a lower inten- sity in Germany when compared to the extensive job destruction that took place in Spain. The Spanish economy shed 9.5 % of total employment between 2008 and 2010 (second quarter), while Germany created 0.4 % of additional employment (EU-27 average: -2.2 %). Employment destruction in Spain affected foreigners with a particular ferocity (-13.3 %). In Germany, on the other hand, foreign employment grew by 2.4 % in these two years and national employment by only 0.3 %. Labour Market Integration and Public Perceptions of Immigrants • 67 Differences in unemployment rates between foreigners and nationals are posi- tive and substantial in both countries (see Fig. 7). These gaps have been persistent over the last ten years in Germany, while in Spain foreign nationals had similar un- employment rates as own citizens until the crisis and unemployment rocketed from 2007 onwards. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for foreign nationals reached almost 30 % in Spain in 2009, while, the unemployment rate for foreigners in Ger- many was about 15 %. One reason is that migrant-concentrated economic sectors (such as construction) accounted for a large proportion of unemployment in Spain, while in Germany “foreign workers were under-represented in the industries that were hardest hit by the economic crisis” (such as metal production or car man- ufacturing) (Koehler et al. 2010: 19-20). It is noted moreover that unemployment also increased rapidly among Spanish people, reaching about 16 %. Immigrants in Spain were more severely affected by the crisis, but the difference between native- born and foreign nationals is still more pronounced in Germany, when measured in Fig. 5: Employment by nationality in Germany and Spain, 1998-2009 (thousands) 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000 35,000 40,000 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nationals Germany Nationals Spain Foreigners - Total Germany Foreigners - Total Spain Source: own calculation based on Eurostat Labour Force Surveys • Dirk Godenau, Dita Vogel, Vesela Kovacheva, Yan Wu68 relative terms.7 The “wild ride” (Bentolila et al. 2009: 1) of labour market outcomes in Spain is not limited to foreign workers. It is a common attribute and affects all workers in the extensive temporary segment of the market. The strictness of em- ployment protection in the permanent segment is partially compensated for by the fl exibility provided by the temporary segment. Fig. 6: Employment growth by nationality in Germany and Spain (%, 2nd quarters 2008-2010) -16.0 -14.0 -12.0 -10.0 -8.0 -6.0 -4.0 -2.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 EU 27 Germany Spain EU 27 Germany Spain Nationals Foreigners Source: own calculation based on Eurostat Labour Force Surveys 7 If measured in absolute terms (differences in percentage points between foreign and own na- tionals), the employment gap widened most strongly in Spain (Papademetriou et al. 2010: 10). Labour Market Integration and Public Perceptions of Immigrants • 69 6 The public discourse on migration It is commonly assumed that migrants may easily become scapegoats in times of economic crisis because of the increasingly fi erce job competition between foreign- ers and nationals. The increasing popularity of the British National Party and the outbreak of wildcat strikes ‘British jobs for British workers’ in the UK in February 2009 show the severe impact of the economic crisis on the public discourse on mi- grants. Given the differentials in economic development in Spain and Germany, one expects negative public attitudes towards, more heated debates about and more grave concerns over migration in Spain than in Germany. However, evidence sug- gests that public attitudes towards migration did not change dramatically in the course of the economic recession. The current economic crisis has amplifi ed the voices of those who have always been sceptical of the benefi ts of immigration, as a panel of experts concludes after analysing developments in several countries including Germany and Spain (Papa- demetriou et al. 2010: 15). People who considered immigration more of a problem than an opportunity increased by between 4 and 9 percentage points between 2008 Fig. 7: Unemployment rates by nationality in Germany and Spain, 1998-2009 (%) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Nationals Germany Nationals Spain Foreigners - Total Germany Foreigners - Total Spain Percent Source: Eurostat Labour Force Surveys • Dirk Godenau, Dita Vogel, Vesela Kovacheva, Yan Wu70 and 2009 in several European countries (German Marshall Fund of the United States et al. 2009: 6). This number increased by fi ve percentage points in Germany, reach- ing 44 % of the survey participants – an increase but not really a striking change. Spain was not included in the survey until 2009, and revealed that 58 % of respond- ents saw immigration as rather problematic. However, the same survey indicates that immigration does not really score high among most respondents’ current concerns.8 What is strikingly different is the opinion of the Government’s capacity to manage migration: 71 % of respondents in Germany thought that their Government was doing a good or fair job, while only 33 of the Spanish sample had a positive opinion of their Governments’ management capacities (German Marshall Fund of the United States et al. 2009: 23). To a certain degree, the economic recession even replaced migration as a focus of concern in the public discourse in some countries where migration was an issue of high sali- ence in the pre-crisis period (such as Spain and the UK) (Koehler et al. 2010: 23). Right-wing parties have so far not successfully mobilised along xenophobic lines in Spain. Issues of restricting migration and blaming migrants have come up during electoral campaigns, but right-wing parties have received less than 1 % of votes in recent elections. Media debates peaked in 2006, when the number of boat people arriving rapidly increased, without taking on major momentum since the economic crisis (see Fig. 8). Major political debates in the EU Member States are sketched in the yearly re- ports of the National Contact Point of the European Migration Network.9 There are no reports of major debates having been triggered by the economic crisis in Germa- ny and Spain, in 2008 and 2009, but rather by ongoing legislative and institutional debates (e.g. on the Spanish Act on Immigration in 2008 and 2009) and extraordi- nary news events (e.g. following the killing of a German by young men of foreign origin in 2008 in Germany). The media’s framing of migration-related issues is re- garded as a contributing factor to the negative public attitudes towards migration. For example, a recent study of the media coverage of British Muslims between 2000 and 2008 reveals that 36 % of media stories about British Muslims were related to terrorism, and that migrants (especially Muslim migrants) are therefore perceived in the media discourse as being associated with threat and danger (Moore et al. 2008). There were coinciding debates in both Spain and Germany on integration problems of immigrants with a Muslim background in 2010, with debates on relax- ing restrictions for the immigration of highly-skilled labour migrants in Germany. The debate on the integration of Muslim immigrants evolved around the book Deut- 8 One-third of German and two-thirds of Spanish respondents named the economy as the most important problem facing the country today, with immigration being indicated by only 7 % as a key issue after some other topics such as education. At the same time, similar percentages indicate that they are worried about legal migration (Germany: 29 %; Spain: 22 %) or illegal migration (Germany: 63 %; Spain: 71 %). 9 http://emn.sarenet.es/Downloads/prepareShowFiles.do?entryTitle=1.%20Annual%20Poli- cy%20Reports Labour Market Integration and Public Perceptions of Immigrants • 71 schland schafft sich ab (Germany Abandons Itself) penned by the former social- democratic national bank leader Thilo Sarrazin (2010). The presentation as ‘taboo breaking’ was welcomed by considerable parts of the population, while researchers and immigrant organisations criticized the book for its mixture of one-sided presen- tation of evidence, hostility towards immigrants and xenophobia rooted in popular prejudice. For example, the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration characterized the debate as being detached from the facts and partly xenophobic, while indicating that their survey on integration showed a more prag- matic, relaxed attitude among large sections of the population (SVR 2011: 28). How- ever, the German debates are more heavily dominated by a theme of socio-cultural integration than by economic considerations (Habermas 2010; Pfaff 2010). The main topic of public and political debates in Spain focuses on irregular migrants, and eas- ily mixes labour market integration with cultural issues (e.g. Moroccans). 6 Conclusions Germany and Spain have experienced highly-divergent impacts of the crisis on the labour market in general, and on immigrant workers in particular. This can be mainly explained by looking at the economic growth patterns prior to the crisis. Spain’s higher, more labour-intensive growth was enabled by growth in the labour supply Fig. 8: Evolution of public opinion on immigration as a personal or general problem for Spain Source: Ferrero-Turrión/López-Sala 2010: 178 • Dirk Godenau, Dita Vogel, Vesela Kovacheva, Yan Wu72 that was fuelled by immigration, and fostered by an immigration policy that was de facto permissive, while restrictive migration policy prevented labour supply growth in Germany and encouraged more capital-intensive growth in which low-skilled na- tionals, and particularly immigrants, found it diffi cult to integrate. We therefore con- clude that institutional features of the labour market promoted these patterns. The high importance of the temporary and informal labour market segments in Spain, which were hardest hit by the crisis, led to the vulnerable position of immigrant and young workers. The economic crisis has made parts of the population more sceptical about im- migration. 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Labour Market Integration and Public Perceptions of Immigrants • 75 A German translation of this reviewed and authors’ authorised original article by the Federal Insti- tute for Population Research is available under the title “Arbeitsmarktintegration und öffentliche Wahrnehmung von Migranten: Ein Vergleich zwischen Deutschland und Spanien während der Wirtschaftskrise”, DOI 10.4232/10.CPoS-2011-13de or URN urn:nbn:de:bib-cpos-2011-13de3, at http://www.comparativepopulationstudies.de. Date of submission: 21.07.2011 Date of Acceptance: 19.01.2012 Dr. Dirk Godenau ( ). Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spanien. E-Mail: dgodenau@ull.es. URL: www.ull.es Dr. Dita Vogel. Hamburgisches Weltwirtschaftsinstitut, Hamburg, Deutschland. E-Mail: vogel@hwwi.org. URL: http://www.hwwi.org Vesela Kovacheva. Hamburgisches Weltwirtschaftsinstitut, Hamburg, Deutschland. E-Mail: kovacheva@hwwi.org. URL: http://www.hwwi.org Dr. Yan Wu. Swansea University, Swansea, Wales, UK. E-Mail: y.wu@swansea.ac.uk URL: http://www.swansea.ac.uk © Federal Institute for Population Research 2012 – All rights reserved Published by / Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Norbert F. Schneider Federal Institute for Population Research D-65180 Wiesbaden / Germany Managing Editor / Verantwortlicher Redakteur Frank Swiaczny Editorial Assistant / Redaktionsassistenz Katrin Schiefer Language & Copy Editor (English) / Lektorat & Übersetzungen (englisch) Amelie Franke Copy Editor (German) / Lektorat (deutsch) Dr. Evelyn Grünheid Layout / Satz Beatriz Feiler-Fuchs E-mail: cpos@destatis.de Scientifi c Advisory Board / Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Jürgen Dorbritz (Wiesbaden) Paul Gans (Mannheim) Johannes Huinink (Bremen) Marc Luy (Wien) Clara H. 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