The effect of educational policies for immigrants on integration: examples from Turkey and Germany

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of education received by refugees, namely Syrian refugees who migrated to Turkey and Turkish refugees who migrated to Germany during their integration process. Regardless of whether the migration was voluntary or compulsory, the processes experienced afterward show significant similarities because after the migration, the host culture and the migrating societies have to interact in several ways and have to create and balance a social harmony. In this study, in which the effect of education on the process of restoring the harmony balance is tried to be understood, interviews were conducted with a total of 30 participants from Turkey and Germany using semi-structured interview method. Due to the epidemic conditions, most of the interviews were made remotely via the Whatsapp program. Themes were formed/extracted from the written texts created as a result of the interviews and the data were analyzed qualitatively. As a result of the data analysis, it has been determined that one of the major problems immigrants face in their lives is the language barrier- meaning not being proficient enough in the target language to function in the society independently, and this problem can only be overcome by providing a quality education process. Second, it has been concluded that Turkish immigrants who migrated to Germany, which is a country with a high level of welfare, were highly satisfied with their immigration process. This shows that since Germany has been a country of immigration for many years, it has taken serious steps to improve education, health and social service opportunities for immigrants. On the other hand, it has been found that Syrian immigrants who migrated to Turkey are generally not satisfied. This finding shows that Turkey is a country that is trying to establish its policies towards immigrants and that it is at the beginning of the road in this regard.