Social innovation as a process: pursuing a pathway to the labour market inclusion of refugee women in Berlin

Abstract

This article analyses the pathway pursued to engage key stakeholders in a Social Innovation (SI) governance process to achieve better inclusion of refugee women in the Berlin labour market. Thereby, special emphasis is placed on the contribution of the local university as the lead partner to realise this objective. Results indicate how the university provided the groundwork for the engagement of representatives in relevant public authorities and administration. These in turn activated together with the target group and civil society initiatives to initiate a SI governance process that led within the three-year timeframe to intensifying communication among the diverse key stakeholders. The co-creation of the pilots and the learnings gained from testing these, including the feedback from the refugee women, themselves, resulted in a shared problem awareness. This in turn, due to the relative frequency of feedback in roundtables, dialogue workshops, etc., led in its final year to an expressed interest to form a strategy group to spell out the mutually agreed upon principles for new policies. Outlining central aspects of this social innovative journey leads to identifying valuable insights for future initiatives that could be developed in comparable contexts for a more positive inclusion of refugee women.

Keywords:

• Social innovation
• co-creation
• women refugees
• labour market
• university
• Berlin
• governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Vulnerable in the sense that they have fled war, violence and have given up old ways and settings to start up a new life in for the most part an unknown context, language, and culture. They also bring new lives, languages, cultures, insights, and additional human resources to the city.

2 A rare example might be one of the Berlin Best Practices Back on Track e.V.: Finding their Arabic speaking children confronted with a German school system that was already understaffed, concerned parents and former teachers formed this NGO, sought cooperation partners within the German system and set up special courses for ‘self-organised learning’ for their children, after school study groups and most recently intensive training courses to prepare Arabic speaking teachers and academics to teach within the German system. After five years, these teachers are beginning to find their way into the German system.

3 Nonetheless, these include e.g., apprentices, and interns, who were paid for their work, or others who may have been employed in temporary jobs, limited contracts Thus, this does not make a statement about the quality of the job, nor if professional skills are matched in the new occupation.

4 Please find the MoU in the ANNEX (German only).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tobias Biehle

Tobias Biehle has been working as a research assistant at the Department of Work, Technology and Participation at the Berlin University of Technology since 2019. His research interests lie in the analysis of socio-technical innovation processes. His methodological focus is on qualitative research and participation. Mr Biehle completed his studies in Sociology (B.A.) at the University of Bremen and the master’s programme in Planning and Participation (M.Sc.) at the University of Stuttgart. He previously worked as a research assistant at the communication agency DIALOG BASIS and at the Centre for Innovation and Risk Analysis (ZIRIUS). During the increasing immigration of refugees to Germany in 2016–2017, he wrote his master’s thesis on the potential of deliberative dialogue processes at the municipal level in the areas of asylum and integration.

Czarina Wilpert

Czarina Wilpert completed her advanced degrees in Sociology (M.A and Dr. Phil.) and was a research fellow at the Science Centre Berlin (WZB), the Department of Sociology of the Berlin University of Technology, and The Federal Institute for Occupational training. She is a specialist in international migration with a research focus on issues of the social organisation of international migration, second generation youth, gender, immigrant business and institutional discrimination. Dr. Wilpert was a member of the EU-TSER Research Program ‘Migrant insertion in the informal economy, deviant behaviour and the impact on receiving societies, as well the EU-TSER Research Network: „Working on the fringes: immigrant business, economic integration and informal practices’ as well as served as a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Technology and Society of the Berlin University of Technology headed the German part of the study on, ‘Gender, Race and Citizenship’ within the EU TSER Program on Citizenship (2010).