Abstract

The arrival of almost 1 million asylum-seekers in Germany in 2015 marked the beginning of the often cited ‘culture of welcome’. At the time, both large parts of primarily needed provisions and medium-run measures such as advice in communication with public authorities or language training were supplied through volunteers. Recent studies have indicated that this group of supporters consisted of a surprisingly high share of formerly non-civil engaged people. The project aims to quantitatively assess the extent of voluntary commitment from the local population as well as its importance for the integration of refugees. In the analysis an innovative approach for elicitation of macro-data is proposed together with recent micro-data from the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees. The results will be discussed relative to findings on the effectiveness of existing mentoring programs for refugees with regard to their nationwide generalizability.