Refugee Migrations – Opportunities and Challenges for Retailing

The strong influx of refugees in 2015 and 2016 has made itself felt in the distribution trade: the sharp rise in retail and food sales seems to have been partly caused by the influx of refugees. The question of the extent to which refugees can be employed as retail workers requires a differentiated reply. The needs of retailers for qualified personnel, on the one hand, and the relatively low level of education of many refugees, on the other, are not easily reconcilable, so that an ideal matching in the labour market will not be possible, at least not in the short term.