Paper short abstract:

Inclusion of refugees' agency can counter balance or add something to government programs that were designed at "the desk" mostly without talking to refugees. Though well-intended, many programs don't include refugee opinions and can make it difficult for them to get established in the host society.

Paper long abstract:

The mobility of people, as a result of armed conflicts, has increased dramatically over the past few decades. Germany alone has witnessed the arrival of some 1.2 million refugees since the summer of 2015, requiring quick intervention. The State has often designed programs without having time to interact with the refugees as individuals. The authors work in Berlin among NGOs, in startups, and in one-on-one interpreter or collaboration roles with refugees and with aid programs, filling the gaps left by those well intended programs. Today, as the immediate criticality of need in Germany has eased, several refugee-driven endeavors have taken root, and more are in the ideation stages.

In this paper we note the patterns and processes that characterize several successful refugee driven endeavors. Structural constraints of German bureaucracy are a daily feature of these emergent endeavors and this paper outlines the patterns of engagement and co-integration. Can these patterns direct government agencies to plan for merging populations in the numbers of the 2015 - 2018 period as we move into the next decade?