The Refugee Integration Industry: Stakeholder Power, Market Logic, and the (De)Humanisation of Refugee Labour

Abstract

This paper theorises the refugee integration industry by examining how institutional configurations and stakeholder arrangements shape labour market integration outcomes for refugees in Germany and Turkey. Drawing on Spender's theory of industrial recipes, we conceptualise the integration industry as a network of public, private and third-sector actors governed by competing logics of humanitarianism and market efficiency. Through a comparative case study approach based on more than 200 policy, institutional, and civil society sources, we demonstrate how power asymmetries and economic imperatives systematically marginalise refugees' human agency, producing both humanising and dehumanising effects. We introduce a fourfold typology of (de)humanitarianism, indifference, assimilation, integration and multiculturalism models that reveals how different national and organisational contexts mediate the moral, economic, and political tensions at the heart of refugee labour market integration. Despite stark contrasts in governance models and economic capacity, both countries institutionalise forms of exclusion that limit meaningful participation and recognition. Our analysis advances the theoretical understanding of the refugee integration industry as a contested and relational space where policy, discourse and institutional practice interact to shape refugee subjectivities and futures. In doing so, we call for more reflexive, inclusiv, and agency-centred approaches to integration that foreground social justice and co-determination.