Surveying Migrants in the Context of the Lowincome Panel PASS

Abstract

The panel study ^"Labor Market and Social Security" (PASS), established by the Institute for Employment Research, is a central data source for research on unemployment, poverty, and the welfare state in Germany. Since 2007, approximately 12,000 persons in more than 8,000 households have been interviewed annually. The study's design particularly allows for evaluating the situation of recipients of basic income support, called unemployment benefits II (UB II) in Germany. With the influx of refugees to Germany, the structure of UB II recipients changed and as a consequence Arabic-speaking persons needed to be integrated into PASS. In 2016, that is, in PASS wave 10, we were faced with several challenges to meet the needs of this new population. This paper focuses on fieldwork issues: How did we access the special population of Arabic-speaking respondents and which contact strategies were necessary to reach refugees? And how did we manage to conduct the interviews given the respondents’ different cultural backgrounds and their special living conditions as refugees in Germany? The sampling structure of PASS allows for comparing the refugee sample and the general UB II recipients. A great willingness to participate and high motivation was apparent among the refugees. It was possible to obtain access to the refugee households both by telephone and face-to-face. Whereas non-response occurred to a larger extent in the general refresher sample due to refusals, in the refugee sample it was caused by lower reachability.