Integration Teacher Deriabina: “50 Percent of Migrants Have No Motivation”
A Russian-born integration instructor in Hannover says half of Germany's integration course participants lack motivation while the state funds an ineffective system with no accountability.
Lolita Deriabina, who arrived in Germany five years ago to pursue a master’s degree and now teaches German as a foreign and second language while leading integration courses for migrants, shared her experiences in a candid interview, according to Nius.
Deriabina estimates that between 40 and 50 percent of course participants are physically present but completely lack motivation. She can identify early in each course which students will succeed and which will not. Some fail to attend, ignore emails, and even evade job center appointments without facing meaningful consequences.
The system allows participants to attend courses, sign attendance sheets, and leave immediately without penalty. Students may miss up to 30 percent of course time before the job center intervenes, but even then the response is minimal. Housing and course funding continue regardless of performance. Those who fail examinations simply receive enrollment in another course.
This creates a perverse cycle where migrants can spend countless months cycling through integration programs, rejecting job offers, and remaining entirely within communities where only their native language is spoken, all while taxpayers foot the bill.
Deriabina pulled no punches when describing the institutional incentives behind the failing system. Integration courses receive state funding but operate through providers whose primary interest lies not in successful integration but in securing continued government financing. Proper oversight mechanisms either do not exist or are deliberately ineffective. The result is burned-out teachers and unmotivated participants.
The instructor also warned that Germany’s excessive cultural accommodation may be undermining its own identity. While the state translates all important information into foreign languages and celebrates other cultures’ holidays, it risks allowing its own traditions to disappear amid misguided multiculturalism.
When a country acts with excessive liberalism and openness, newcomers see no responsibility to adapt, Deriabina cautioned. Eventually the nation loses itself. She expressed fear that within a few years, Germany will struggle to define what makes it German—which language is its own and which culture unites its people.
A country does not disappear because people arrive, she observed, but because it stops defining itself.
The critique comes as Germany spends approximately one billion euros annually on integration courses, yet only one in three participants successfully completes the program.
With information from Nius
