The Transfer Story of Magdeburg

Magdeburg is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, with a population of 240,000. The city is located very centrally in Europe, and with its connections by motorways, railroads and waterways, Magdeburg is very important for the European logistic industry. Magdeburg has two universities which, together with the many research institutions located in the city, exert increasing influence on the local economy. The universities and research institutions play a particularly important role as employers for highly qualified young people, and currently a large part of the university staff and scientific institutes consist of international employees and researchers. “This is a very positive development for Magdeburg,” says Janine Lehmann, project leader in the Welcoming International Talent (WIT) project. “But to continue this development, and to expand it into other areas of work, Magdeburg needs more international talent.”

Currently it is extremely difficult for local companies in Magdeburg to find suitable employees on the regional and national labor market. Therefore, these companies have started to look around on the European and international labor market. Magdeburg realized it needed to rebrand their city with a focus on internationals, and to show them how Magdeburg is a very attractive place to move to. And the best way to do this is by helping international workers find their way around the city and to integrate them in the local community. Through the WIT project, the city has focused on how to achieve this goal, mainly by establishing an International House, and by setting up a web portal for internationals.

The International House

“The first thing we did was to create a working structure that could be sustainable even after the end of the URBACT knowledge transfer project,” Janine Lehmann explains. A key element here was the Local Support Group (LSG) as a steering committee, consisting of representatives from both Magdeburg universities, a representative from the Leibniz Institute of Neurobiology, and a representative from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems. The LSG actually already existed before the WIT project began, albeit in a smaller capacity. For the WIT project, extra partners were invited, such as colleagues from the Economics Department, and employees from the Foreigners Office. Each of these partners has a stake in improving the internationalization of Magdeburg. That is why, within the expanded Local Support Group, the idea was formed to combine several existing facilities for internationals into one.

One of these existing facilities was the Citizens’ Service Department, which was looking for a new location for their Citizens' Office. This Office was to be combined with a section of the Foreigners Authority, which also happened to be in need of relocation. Anne-Katrin Behnert, who works at the International Office at the University Otto von Guericke, remembers how convenient the timing here was: “The idea to establish a Welcome Service for Internationals therefore came at the exact right time, as it could immediately be merged with the existing plans of the Citizens' Service,” she says. The plan was presented to important local stakeholders, and received approval from them. That meant that the Welcome Service was merged with the Citizen’s Office and a section of the Foreigners Authority into an ‘International House’. This House is currently under construction: “The International House is going to be in a new building,” Behnert clarifies. “The plan is to replace an existing building; the old structure will be demolished in June 2021, and construction of the International House will begin in November.” The property is located in the city center, close to the university. That means it will be easy to find, since it’s on one of Magdeburg’s main streets. Once the International House opens, it will be a centrally-located welcome and information point for all internationals in Magdeburg.

The biggest challenges while designing the plans for the International House were (and are) orientation and organization. For example: how do you avoid duplicate structures? And how do you delimit the tasks among participating organizations and stakeholders? This has been an ongoing discussion within the Magdeburg LSG, and even though the Welcome Center North in Groningen and the International House in Leuven serve as models and best practice examples for the group, exactly how to establish similar binding joint structures within Magdeburg will be the focus of the LSG in the next few months. “There is a rough structure of what the International House will look like. Now we have to work through the tasks from A to Z; and have a look at who does what when etc.” says project leader Janine Lehmann. Delimiting tasks and structures has taken a backseat because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but luckily there is still plenty of time to crystallize everything, since the construction of the International House won’t be done until 2023.

Arriving and living in Magdeburg

As part of the WIT project, Magdeburg has also been working on a web portal for internationals. The portal bundles all information about arriving and living in Magdeburg. Julia Krumm works at the International Office at the University of Applied Sciences in Magdeburg, and she was closely involved with setting up the web portal. “We took a look at various web portals as examples,” Krumm recalls, “and we then further specified the basic structure at a meeting of the Local Support Group in December 2019.” The idea of the website is that it is divided into various stages of arrival and stay. That means the website contains pre-arrival information, information and assistance for the first few weeks in the city, and tips and tricks for settling in and building your life in Magdeburg. The content on the web portal was accumulated with help and feedback from internationals, and feedback has been consistently positive. The web portal was initially planned to go live late 2020, but this has been pushed back to at least the end of the WIT project. “There is no International House yet, and we don’t want to release the website without all the information it needs,” Janine Lehmann explains. “However, there is no pressure to go online soon.”

One challenge the civil servants of Magdeburg faced while designing the web portal was how to integrate it with existing websites. The city of Magdeburg had already developed an integration portal that provides information similar to what the international talent web portal will offer. The major difference between the two portals is that the existing website mostly focuses on refugees and migrants. Although the target group of the new web portal is somewhat different, a lot of the content and information is basically the same, and information about living in Magdeburg is, of course, interesting for both migrants and international talent. “We have to see which of the existing content we can summarize and how,” Laura Lubinski (Coordinator for Integration / City of Magdeburg) clarifies. “This has not yet been conclusively discussed.” Additionally, there is still some information that needs to be translated from German to English. Initially the plan was to do this through an automatic translator. However, Lubinski says that since these translation services are not always reliable, they have decided to have the content on the website translated into English by an actual translator.

Looking beyond one’s own nose

Overall, the WIT project in Magdeburg has been a success, and according to Anne-Katrin Behnert, the exchange with European partners and like-minded people has been extremely helpful. “After all, we all work with the same goal: to improve the way we deal with international talent,” Behnert states. “We are all working on the same topics and can support each other. It's always good to look beyond one's own nose.” With the International House finished in 2023, and the web portal launching once the final adjustments have been made, Magdeburg is well on its way to achieving its main goal: to attract more scientists and students from abroad in order to further develop Magdeburg as a location for science. And how does Magdeburg feel about its international future? Project leader Janine Lehmann is confident: “In five years, Magdeburg will be attractive and well-known throughout the world as a location for living, working and studying for international talent.” Whether that will turn out to be true, only time will tell. However, if the enthusiasm of Janine Lehmann and her team during the WIT project is anything to go by, it certainly seems possible.