The role of trust in street-level organisations within integration projects
2019 (English) Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Sustainable development SDG 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all, SDG 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
Abstract [en]
Swedish immigrant integration holds a unique contradiction in that it is lauded as having the ‘best’ policy in Europe (MIPEX), but its outcomes are amongst some of the poorest (Eurostats). Currently, responsibility of implementing integration policy is held by national agencies at the macro-level. Such a structure, however, is likely to overshadow what goes on at the micro-level, an oversight which is also reflected within current research. By adopting a street-level organisation (SLOs) approach, this research sets out to explore the gap between formal policy provision and measurable outcomes, where trust is situated as a critical dimension within the process of integration that is yet to be captured by other means. This presentation explores trust as a reason for the disparity between policy and outcomes, with the help of a case study that involves an SLO situated in Gothenburg; more specifically, a suburb characterised by a 90% immigrant population, and its unexploited social capital. To resolve this issue Gothenburg embarked on a four-year EU sponsored project concerned with labour market integration. Under this umbrella, a sub-project has been launched to engage 500 immigrants visiting an SLO within green business development as a means to integration. However, while initially promising, several intricacies surrounding the studied SLO, including its structure, history and leadership, has brought forth a number of worrying insights that have severed trust-building and impeded future work. Previous studies exploring the success of projects at the street level have successfully used qualitative methods, including reflexive non-participant observation. In our research we have used field notes collected over a six-month period from the project’s inception, supplemented by time lines of interactions and stakeholder engagements. The data have been coded to decipher key incidents and exchanges where trust has played a pivotal role in the dynamics between stakeholders, and for the direction of the project, as such. Given the responsibility that SLOs currently hold within immigrant integration, the personal street-level interactions from which (dis)trust evolves need to be regarded as significantly important. Our findings suggest that trust is greatly underestimated within SLOs, with distrust disrupting the success of the integration process, often resulting in project failure. This presentation will make recommendations as to how a SLO approach can contribute to trust-building, which will go some way in addressing existing ambiguities and inconsistencies between policy and outcomes concerning immigrant integration.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages 2019.
Keywords [en]
street-level organisations, migration, integration, labour market, trust, distrust
National Category
Peace and Conflict Studies Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified International Migration and Ethnic Relations
Research subject Economy, Organisation theory; Humanities, Human Geography; Humanities, Cultural Sociology; Social Sciences, Social Work; Social Work, Social Psychology
Identifiers URN: urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-128763 OAI: oai:DiVA.org:lnu-128763 DiVA, id: diva2:1850634
Conference The 17th ESPANET 2019 Conference, Social citizenship, migration and conflict - Equality and opportunity in European welfare states, The European Network for Social Policy Analysis, Stockholm, Sweden, 5–7 September 2019
2024-04-102024-04-102025-02-20 Bibliographically approved