Immigration is always a hot-button issue in Europe and this summer has been no exception, with a border crisis in Spain prompting panic among governments at the prospect of huge numbers pouring into the continent.
However, one country is establishing a model that could point the way to how nations manage migration effectively and take advantage of skills from outside the EU.
Since Angela Merkel welcomed huge numbers into the country over a decade ago, Germany has pursued a more managed migration model than Britain.
Like Britain, Germany is increasingly dependent on immigrants from outside the bloc to prop up essential services, including healthcare and care work. In response, it has increased its efforts to attract non-Europeans, setting up targeted programmes and measures to integrate new arrivals.
Germany’s migration model
Since Brexit ended freedom of movement within the EU, the UK has turned to non-Europeans to help fill these workforces. In the coming decades, immigrants are only set to become more important for richer European economies where more people die than are born.
Like Britain, Germany faces a future crisis if it cannot attract skilled migration, with the Bertelsmann Foundation projecting that the number of workers would fall by around 10 per cent by 2040.
So its efforts to attract more non-Europeans have been increasing. Germany has become by far the largest user of the EU’s Blue Card, a combined work and residence permit for non-EU nationals that is designed to attract engineers, IT specialists, doctors and other highly qualified workers.
Migrants from Syria have been able to participate in Germany’s publicly funded integration courses including language and orientation studies that covered topics including German law and society.
In 2024, the country launched an “Opportunity Card”, a one-year job-seeker visa for non-EU nationals, to attract qualified people. Experts say these programmes probably targeted India, which mass-produces science graduates and still has a labour surplus.
Germany and India signed a migration mobility agreement in 2022 to facilitate worker movement, making it far easier for skilled Indian nationals to work in Germany. Two years later, Germany said it would increase the skilled work visa quota for Indians from 20,000 a year to 90,000.
The UK has also signed a bilateral agreement to facilitate the recruitment of Indian nurses but experts say it relies more heavily on its broader points-based immigration and post-study work system, while Germany has targeted recruitment and training pipelines.
The Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees in Berlin. Germany has become highly dependent on a non-European workforce (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty)“The main difference is that the UK’s system is primarily skill- and salary-based,” said Portes, “while Germany has relied more on bilateral country-to-country deals, often with a sector focus.”
Germany’s underlying immigration rules are nationality-neutral, but bilateral agreements can make particular migration routes easier for citizens of particular countries.
David Kipp, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said that the German system did not discriminate on the basis of nationality and migration to Germany was “self-organised”. Bilateral programmes between India and Germany, however, had “improved conditions” for Indians coming to Germany to look for work.
He added that Germany viewed the presence of non-EU immigrants who came on limited-duration visas, such as students, but stayed to work as a plus; and integrating them into Germany’s social fabric was easier. “Germany needs to do more to increase the retention rate of these [wanted] students and put them in contact with local companies early on,” he said.
In comparison, in the UK, Indian students looking for work were often viewed negatively, with critics viewing it as an exploitation of the student pathway that eventually increased migration pressure.
The rise of anti-immigrant parties
Yet Germany has also seen a backlash to immigration. From around 2015, over a million refugees arrived from Syria and elsewhere. Since then, support for the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has been on the rise.
In Thuringia, the AfD won the highest number of votes in previous elections. In upcoming state elections on 6 September, the AfD is far ahead of other parties in the eastern regions of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, with polling putting it at around 36 and 42 per cent respectively.
The AfD also leads in Germany-wide polls with 28 per cent compared with around 20 per cent for the party of the Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Merz has said he will address voters’ concerns and has moved further right, incurring criticism last year after he said there was a problem with “Stadtbild” or the cityscape, due to an increase in immigration. Asked to clarify what he meant, he declared “just ask your daughters”.
The AfD accused Merz and the government of failing to tackle Islamist extremism and take “migrant violence” seriously after a deadly attack on a Pride parade in Berlin last month in which a woman was killed. Merz said the victims had been attacked by “an Islamist who sought to attack those values”. However, the AfD is capitalising.
A memorial in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin after a car ramming attack killed one and injured 29 people at a Pride parade. The AfD party criticised the government’s alleged pro-migrant policies after the incident (Photo: John Macdougall/AFP)“I need to get a contract with Indian nurses to look after me at home when I am older and sick,” a 70-year-old German woman in Weimar, Thuringia, told The i Paper. The woman did not want to reveal her name – hiring foreign labour for at-home care work is a complex legal matter in Germany. But she suggested she was disappointed at the lack of Germans in the nursing sector and did not want to be looked after by a foreigner.
One caregiver from Morocco told The i Paper one of the women he cared for had explicitly told him she wanted a German caregiver but none had been available.
“Both the UK and Germany relied to a large extent on free movement within the EU. Brexit ended that for the UK,” said Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London. “In any case, as Germany has found, within-EU flows would have largely dried up because of demographics and rising prosperity.”
Ageing populations mean there are fewer Europeans to fill all roles in these countries, while rising prosperity in countries that were once less prosperous, such as Poland and Romania, means people from there no longer want to take roles they may once have done.
“So both [Britain and Germany] have turned to skill-based non-EU work and student migration,” said Portes.
Like the UK, Germany is increasingly reliant on Indian workers in particular. Indians have been travelling to the UK for work and study for a long time, but many are now choosing to work in Germany.
From 40,000 in 2005 to 86,000 in 2015 and more than 280,000 last year, the Indian population in Germany has grown and a majority pay social security contributions. Indian was the most common nationality of people migrating to the UK since 2005, and Indians accounted for a quarter of all non-EU arrivals since 2021.
India trains large numbers of healthcare workers and IT professionals and is well positioned to bridge key gaps in the labour sector.
Understanding the contradiction
Portes said it was too soon to say whether the German or the UK’s approach would work out better, and it was difficult to compare, given the UK’s historic links with India.
“The challenge the UK faces is much more about achieving a stable system for work and study, rather than swinging back and forth between very liberal and very restrictive policies,” he said.
But as demographics change further, skilled, semi-skilled, and even low-paid immigrants are likely to become a hot commodity in an ageing Europe. The continent may spend the next decade arguing about how to keep immigrants out, while its economies compete to bring them in.
The countries that understand this contradiction – and can build systems that can manage migration better — might be better placed to retain their economic edge and the high living standards Europeans prize.
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