Chapter 9 – About this Guide

This guide is intended for visitors to Germany, refugees and future citizens. Its aim is to provide orientation to visitors when they first arrive in Germany. This guide aims to provide useful information for refugees for the time before they can participate in integration courses and German classes offered by the government. As of September 2015, this kind of information had not yet been provided in a guide for this purpose by the BAMF (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge).

The illustrated guide is available in different languages. It is available online with the option of printing it for distribution. A printed booklet may become available at a later date.

The sole purpose of this guide is to provide useful information. However, it is possible that this guide could also be perceived as being arrogant or pejorative. We have been aware of this throughout this project.

The concept and content of this guide has been designed and compiled with the support of many people (e.g. people from Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Egypt, Palestine; people who recently immigrated to Germany; people who are currently refugees, etc.). It was very important to involve refugees in designing this guide. When discussing this project with refugees, it was discussed whether a guide like this might be seen as being arrogant or pejorative. The refugees explicitly rejected this concern. To the contrary, they said this is exactly the kind of information they need.