“Working on national topics and being part of the international research community go very well together”

Research is increasingly international and benefits greatly from international exchange. The IAB is also becoming more and more international. Yuliya Kosyakova, Head of the IAB’s research department “Migration and International Labour Studies”, and IAB Director Bernd Fitzenberger talk about the opportunities, successes and challenges associated with this.

What does internationality mean to you in these special times?

Prof. Dr. Yuliya Kosyakova is the Head of the research department “Migration and International Labour Studies” at the IAB.

Kosyakova: Due to my personal history and experience, I practically embody the concept of internationality myself (laughs). I have an immigrant background, have worked in different countries, do research on international topics and have an international network. For me, internationality primarily means being in contact with other people across national borders. This cross-border exchange is beneficial for all of us.

Prof. Bernd Fitzenberger, PhD, is the Director of the IAB.

Fitzenberger: Internationality means broadening your own horizons. Doing my PhD in the U.S. was the key to my career, even though I returned to Germany after my doctorate. I belong to the generation that witnessed the European integration that has led to today’s European Union. This incredible success story has strongly influenced my political thinking. Thinking internationally and being rooted locally – this is how I see myself.

The IAB should push ahead with its internationalisation. This is a recommendation by the German Science and Humanities Council, the most important advisory board of the Federal Government concerning research policy. What is the institute currently focusing upon regarding its internationalisation strategy?

Fitzenberger: Internationalisation has several dimensions for the IAB. The three most important ones are reflected in our fields of activity: research, data generation and policy advice.

Concerning research, we focus at the moment on systematic international networking. The IAB already maintains an incredible number of mostly bilateral research partnerships, and individual researchers cooperate with top-class researchers in a number of countries. The Institute itself, however, was not part of a broader institutionalised network in the past, which is exactly what we are changing now. One example is the ELMI network (European Network of Labour Market Research Institutes), which we founded together with the Luxembourg research institute LISER (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research). This is a network of European labor market research institutions in which we not only exchange information on research, but also on international policy advice.

IAB’s research topics are becoming increasingly international.

Kosyakova: IAB’s research topics are also becoming increasingly international. For example, the Institute makes a significant contribution to migration and integration research not only in Germany, but also internationally. Not least because of our surveys, which we conduct in cooperation with the Research Center of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees in Nuremberg and the Socio-Economic Panel at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. Our longitudinal survey of refugees is the only one of its kind in the world and enables us to follow refugees over the years and track their progress. We will soon be launching the “International Mobility Panel” to further deepen our understanding of international migration movements.

 IAB uses a broad range of instruments for international research cooperations.

What forms of international research cooperation does the IAB promote exactly?

Fitzenberger: For this, the IAB uses a broad range of instruments. For personal networking, for example, we enable our employees to take part in international conferences and promote international research stays. At the same time, we organise international conferences ourselves and invite guest researchers to visit us. The IAB pursues specific activities for the international research community, thereby creating contacts and visibility, for example via the mentioned ELMI network. We are also active in the leading research societies in the field of labour market research. We are sought-after discussion partners for international organisations, and this exchange often leads to further interesting research commissions for the IAB.

Kosyakova: The IAB has developed its own event formats over the years. For example, the “Special Lecture Series”, where we regularly invite top-class international researchers to present their current research here in Nuremberg. This is a great opportunity, also for young researchers, to get in touch with these scholars. In order to be recognised in research, it is also important that we are well represented in international research journals – and we are. In the latest ranking of Germany’s largest business magazine “WirtschaftsWoche” ranking for research in economics, IAB is the fourth strongest research institute in the German-speaking world, only three bank research institutes are ahead. This also gives us international visibility. There is no such ranking in sociology, but there we are also making very good progress.

So IAB has nothing to hide in comparison with other institutions?

Kosyakova: Absolutely not.

Fitzenberger: We play an important role in our research areas at the international level. Our advantage is that we have been pursuing very systematic personnel development in this direction for years and that we focus on labour market and occupational research. This enables us to be very innovative in our research field, which is booming.

The internationalisation of data is primarily about making IAB data available to users worldwide. What is the biggest challenge here?

Kosyakova: One challenge is certainly ensuring data protection at the many international access points for researchers that the IAB offers in neighbouring European countries, but also in North America.

Fitzenberger: Data protection is always a priority. Our data are not simply treasures where you just have to open the treasure chest; you have to access them first. To ensure that external researchers from other countries can not only conduct good research with our German data, but also work out implications for German policy, we must always provide them with comprehensive explanations with the data – an international handbook, so to speak. These challenges are coped with in an excellent way by our Research Data Centre.

This is internationality in action within German policy advice.

When it comes to the internationalisation of policy advice, how strongly is the IAB represented in this area, for example in Brussels?

Kosyakova: I can mainly speak for my research topic, migration and integration. We are definitely present in Brussels to give policy advice on the integration of refugees, for example. The IAB recently visited the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway with a delegation from the Federal Employment Agency to discuss various topics with local stakeholders – and to gain knowledge that will subsequently form the basis for international policy advice.

Just this morning, I also gave a presentation to job center managers on the integration of Ukrainian refugees in an international comparison. We discussed how other countries proceed, what they do differently to Germany and what we can learn from each other. This is internationality in action within German policy advice.

When the EU looks at German labour market issues, they look at the IAB.

Fitzenberger: First of all, I would like to emphasise that the IAB has a clear legal mandate to provide policy advice in Germany, where we are financed from public funds. However, this does not contradict our positioning at the international level. On the contrary, policy advice for Germany can benefit enormously from country comparisons in particular and political decisions at international level are of utmost importance for Germany. In fact, we also successfully provide policy advice on the international level. Often through individual expertise – some IAB employees like Yuliya have internationally sought-after expertise in their area of specialization. They therefore receive many inquiries. IAB employees are also regularly invited as discussion partners in the network of European employment services, as well as at the OECD or the ILO, the International Labor Organization. Although this is not an institutionalised advisory mandate, when the EU or other international organizations look at German labour market issues, they look at the IAB. This means that we have an impact on policy advice beyond national borders.

I am also very excited by the role of the Federal Employment Agency and IAB in small-scale exchanges in border regions, for example with neighbouring regions in France, Austria or Denmark. Although some of these are very local advisory projects, they extend beyond the borders of Germany. And with these projects we are visible to the BA’s international partners and the players in specific policy fields across borders. Our regional research network, which engages in these local policy advice projects, therefore also has an international dimension.

The internationalisation of  the IAB does not only take place externally, with cooperations and research topics, but also internally. How does the Institute live its own internationalisation?

Kosyakova: The Institute lives through us employees – and more and more of us now have a migration background or came here from abroad for a research stay. We learn an incredible amount from each other, not only in terms of subject matter, but also culturally. In our research unit alone, we can say “thank you” in eleven different languages.

We need a welcome culture that puts internationality into practice.

Fitzenberger: I really appreciate this diversity. As an employer, we are very interested in attracting qualified employees, both researchers and non-researchers, from abroad and we see great potential in this. To achieve this, we need a welcome culture that puts internationality into practice.

What challenges does such a diverse workforce pose for the Institute as an employer?

Fitzenberger: Every country has its peculiarities, including ours. The many administrative processes that exist in Germany in particular require us to provide close support to new employees so that they can find their way around here.

Kosyakova: The internal structures of the Federal Employment Agency, some of which still have a very national focus, are also a challenge. For example, German is required as an official language for some bureaucratic procedures. We now have an internal network in which our international colleagues exchange information and help each other, for example with translations. But we also collect problems and discuss with the institute management and the Human Resources department where there are still problems.

IAB masters very well the balancing act between national tasks and international orientation.

International research institute and national office: How does IAB manage this balancing act?

Kosyakova: In sociology, there is the concept of “dual identity”. I am an internationally oriented researcher, but I have my professional home and my national tasks here at the Institute. I combine these worlds by using findings from the international context for national tasks and vice versa. From this perspective, it is no longer so difficult to reconcile internationality and nationality. Also, what I like about the IAB is that we don’t rest on our laurels, but continue to learn and think about what we can improve in the future. In short, the IAB masters very well the balancing act between national tasks and international orientation.

Fitzenberger: I also think that we manage this balancing act very well. We can use the best of both worlds. As part of the Federal Employment Agency, we are always in close contact with the labour market practice and policy making in Germany, and on this basis we provide policy advice that is heard at the national level. As part of the international research community, we conduct innovative research and attract excellent researchers – and their research findings in turn provide us with answers for our national tasks. Both sides benefit from each other.

When we talk about future developments, we should also always keep Europe in mind. If the importance of European policy making increases, then our national mission will also become increasingly European. We should not see nationality and internationality as opposites, but rather they go very well together.

doi: 10.48720/IAB.FOO.20240701.02