migrants from entering. With more and more migrants gathering at the border and a deterioration of the humanitarian situation in refugee camps along the Balkan Route, the German government decided in August 2015 allow refugees from Syria to seek asylum in Germany without applying the Dublin Regulation (Deutsche Welle, 2017). What followed was the large migration wave that is displayed by the shaded area in Figure 1(a). Following the migration wave, in 2016 Germany became the country hosting the largest number of refugees in Europe. Within Europe, Germany hosted the majority of Syrians (in 2020 around 59%), followed by Sweden (11%). The large number of Syrians going to Germany was mainly due to the country’s open door policy vis-a-vis Syrians (UNHCR, 2021). However, there are seven countries in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa that have been hosting much larger numbers. The number of refugees hosted in Turkey stood at over 2.5 million, and the numbers in Pakistan and Lebanon exceeded one million (UNHCR, 2016).

As shown in Figure 1(b), in late-2016 the number of asylum seekers dropped to its pre-2014 levels. The reasons for this drop were the closing of several borders along the Balkan Route and, most importantly, an agreement between the EU and Turkey in 2016, in which Turkey agreed to prevent migrants from moving to the EU in exchange for a payment of six billion Euro and an agreement that the EU would re-settle one Syrian refugee from Turkey in exchange for every non-Syrian migrant who is turned away by the EU. (Kiris ̧ci, 2021).<sup>1</sup> Despite the many challenges of integrating refugees in the labor market, the situation five years later paints a rather optimistic picture. The government invested heavily in language training, which allowed many refugees to acquire language skills that are critical for the integration in the labor market. Survey data shows that in 2018 around 50% of all refugees were in employment, and another 20 percent in education (Br ̈ucker et al., 2020).

**Assignment of Asylum Seekers in 2015** The assignment of asylum seekers in Germany is organized through a centralized system, although certain responsibilities are delegated to states, counties and municipalities. Asylum seekers who arrive in Germany have to report to the border authorities, the police or a regional office of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and apply for asylum. Upon doing so, they are registered on an asylum seeker database called EASY and received a certificate ( _B ̈uma_ ) that confims their status as asylum seeker and entitles them to social benefits (BAMF, 2019b).

The assignment of asylum seekers is carried out in mutliple steps. In a first step, they are assigned to reception centers that are run by the 16 federal states. The assignment of asylum seekers across states is goverend by a quota system called _K ̈onigsteiner Schl ̈ussel_ , whereby quotas are set annually based on states’ tax revenues (weight 2/3) and population (weight 1/3) two years prior. Federal law requires asylum seekers to stay in the initial reception centers for six months, after which they are assigned onward by the state administration to local reception centers run by counties or municipalities. Asylum seekers have no say in their assignment prodecure; the assignment is done by the state administration according to the law, but also taking into account the availability of suitable accommodation. Asylum seekers have to stay in these centers until a decision is reached

> 1The actual number of asylum seekers coming to Germany dropped almost immediately after the inflow. One reason why the number of asylum applications increased until early 2017 was the time lag in processing asylum applications by the BAMF (BAMF, 2019a, p. 15)

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