Determinants of successful labour market integration as exemplified by the German Green Card programme

Abstract

ABSTRACT The German Green Card programme that was in place from the year 2000 to 2004 was intended to counter claims propagated by industry and trade associations of a shortage of ICT professionals. Even if it is debatable whether the programme can be judged as a success in terms of the absolute number of Green Cards issued, it provides important insights into the long-term integration of migrants from third countries coming to Germany for employment purposes – a matter where the Green Card programme was successful beyond the policy it was originally designed for. Using sequence and cluster analyses to examine the employment trajectories of some 1500 Green Card recipients who came to Germany reveals the personal, occupational and firm-specific characteristics that have contributed to successful integration. It emerges that the likelihood of a Green Card recipient becoming successfully integrated in the German labour market is quite high and grows with increasing establishment size. Other factors beneficial to integration are a moderate agreed wage, employment in a more technically-oriented occupation and in particular being of Central or Eastern European origin. Against the background of the current debate surrounding demographic change and the growing skill shortages, the results obtained in this paper provide indications as to how human capital that is in demand globally and is correspondingly mobile can be bound to the German labour market in the longer term.