Action against Ethnic Discrimination in the Labour Market
Promoting the Strategic Lessons from the EQUAL Community Initiative
October 2007
Tackling discrimination against immigrants and ethnic minorities has been the
major focus of a large number of EQUAL Development Partnerships (DPs). A
European Mainstreaming Platform on this issue was initiated, in 2006, by
EQUAL Managing Authorities in France, Germany and Sweden and this process will
culminate in a conference, in Paris, on 22 and 23 November 2007. The event will
be an outstanding opportunity to discuss and validate recommendations from EQUAL
with key actors and decision-makers at European, national and territorial
levels.
Exploring the Experience of Different Types of Actors
Different groups of actors have a particular role to play in combating ethnic
discrimination in the labour market. Therefore, work under the European Platform
started with a series of five Peer Review Seminars to analyse the
practices that have been piloted in EQUAL and to identify the most successful
approaches that could best be replicated or adapted in the future. Between
February and May 2007, three seminars were held in Germany, one in France and
one in Sweden. Each seminar concentrated on the role of a distinct group of key
operators in pioneering these new approaches and the five groups
were public and
private employment services, trade unions, employers, non-governmental
organisations and local or regional authorities. "Eliminating discrimination
against ethnic minorities requires more than effective legal instruments, it
also requires changes in deeply rooted patterns of behaviour and in the
practices of all institutions and professionals who are, or should be, in
contact with these groups. The Peer Review Seminars were designed to examine the
experiences of different types of actors, identify the main obstacles that they
encountered and consider how their experience and their successes could be more
widely replicated," explains Claude RACK, from the EQUAL Managing
Authority in France that coordinates the cooperative initiative of the three
Member States.
Each seminar brought together participants from some 20 Development
Partnerships that were proposed, as examples of good practice, by the
Managing Authorities or National Support Structures from different Member
States, and also a small number of resource persons, who were "critical friends"
or experts from outside the EQUAL Initiative. The approaches that were analysed
during the seminars mirrored the diversity of concepts in Member States'
strategies to improve the integration of immigrants and ethnic minorities. In
the discussions, two main lines of action were contrasted:
- The first relates to impacting on the existing systems – i.e. changing the
organisations and institutions that intervene in the labour market. DPs
presented successful approaches to mobilising public services and private
organisations so that they stated their commitment to ethnic diversity
explicitly and adopted a clear strategy for increasing their capacity to
counteract discriminatory practices. This included the development and
implementation of new training programmes for professional staff and management
at all levels, enabling these individuals to identify, and cope effectively
with, instances of discrimination in placement and recruitment processes and in
the workplace;
- The second line of action was illustrated through approaches to assisting
immigrants by offering them support and new services that had not, as yet, been
provided by the current systems. DPs have established innovative forms of
vocational and labour market guidance that are tailored to the specific needs of
people of ethnic minority origin and which facilitate their access to mainstream
employment and training intermediaries. They have also demonstrated the
effective use of intercultural mediators or counsellors, both inside and outside
public services, and piloted new approaches to cooperating with organisations
representing the interests of ethnic minorities.
Most participants agreed that these two different priorities should not be
considered as being mutually exclusive and some DPs presented integrated
approaches that combined elements of both concepts effectively.
The conclusions from all five seminars will be presented in more detail at
the Paris conference.
Presenting Recommendations to European, National and Territorial Decision
Makers
The proceedings at this final conference will focus on recommendations for
action that will be introduced and then discussed in six "Key Actor Forums". Five
of these Forums will examine and validate the outcomes of the work of the
different actor groups involved in the Peer Review Seminars, namely:
- Employment and Training Intermediaries;
- Trade Unions;
- Non Governmental Organisations;
- Employers and Companies;
- Local and Regional Actors.
The sixth Forum will concentrate on recommendations from the European level
mainstreaming platform on
Media and Diversity which was launched in 2006 to promote diversity in the
media and especially in television. Within the framework of this parallel
platform Sweden, supported by Finland and Ireland, has brought EQUAL Development
Partnerships together with representatives of the European Broadcasting Union's
Eurovision Intercultural and Diversity Group to exchange their experiences and
to build an Ethnic Diversity Toolkit.
About 300 participants are expected to attend the conference. These will
include key actors from the different Member States and the European Commission,
ESF Managing Authorities, Trade Union and Employer federations, NGOs and other
relevant organisations from civil society, company managers and, of course, the
Development Partnerships that have tested the good practice models on which the
recommendations are based. Together they will explore the opportunities of
transferring EQUAL's approaches and prototypes into Member State's mainstream
practices and policies and of using them to inform future work within the
context of the ESF and the EU's core employment, anti-discrimination and
inclusion strategies.
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