Increasing Employability

Enhancing Access to Employment and the sustainable Inclusion in the Labour Market

• Increasing the Participation of Migrants in Employment
  • Strategic Lessons from EQUAL
    • Increasing the Participation of Migrants
  • Policy Forum Acting against Ethnic Discrimination in Employment
  • Media platform to promote Cultural Diversity
  • Outcomes from EQUAL European Thematic Group on Employability
  • Practical examples of the work of DPs
    • Overview: Thematic Clusters and Approaches
    • Increasing Enrolment in Vocational Training
    • Valuing Migrants' Competences and Acquired Skills
    • Sensitisation and making Active Use of the Media
    • New professional profiles: Mediation, Mentoring, Tutoring
    • Mobilising Corporate Social Responsibility
    • Promoting Non-biased Recruitment
    • Offering Expertise and Support Services to Employers
    • Mobilising action by Trade Unions
    • Integrated Territorial Approaches

Increasing the Participation of Migrants in Employment

Immigrants and members of ethnic minorities continue to encounter manifold and persistent inequalities on the labour market. They are at a much higher risk of unemployment than EU-nationals, receive lower wages, and are significantly over-represented in the least desirable jobs. They face particular disadvantages in acquiring and updating professional skills and qualifications. Many stakeholders maintain that discrimination, while not being the only reason for the exclusion of ethnic minorities from the labour market, is in fact the most important one.

Within the framework of the ESF EQUAL Initiative, more than 350 Development Partnerships (DPs) set out to pilot new approaches to prevent and overcome discrimination against immigrants and ethnic minorities and to facilitate their integration into employment. Their outcomes provide a critical mass of experience to inform new ESF action and many of their measures and methods can be replicated more widely.
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Strategic Lessons from EQUAL

Increasing the participation of migrants in employment

This document summarises outcomes from EQUAL Development Partnerships (DPs), transnational and national thematic networks which have set out to overcome the barriers that hamper or prevent equal participation of immigrants and ethnic minorities in the labour market. It also includes annotated references to the EU policy context
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Outcomes from the Policy Forum Acting against Ethnic Discrimination in Employment

In autumn 2006, the French EQUAL Managing Authority, working in close cooperation with Germany and Sweden, launched a European Platform to stimulate the mainstreaming of those outcomes from EQUAL that have proved successful in tackling racial discrimination in employment. The Paris Policy Forum "Acting against Ethnic Discrimination in Employment" (22-23 November 2007) was the culmination of a series of five transnational Peer Review Seminars initiated by this Platform. These were all geared to presenting and validating, at European level, strategic lessons from the experience of EQUAL DPs that had been operating in this particular thematic field.

	Context Note: An Urgent Need for more intensive EU Action to Combat Discrimination in the Labour Market
	Recommendations for Action
	Proceedings - Final Report
	Acting Against Ethnic Discrimination-Policy Forum Report - Summary

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Outcomes from the Media platform to promote Cultural Diversity in the Media

This Platform was initiated, in 2006, by the Swedish ESF Council, with support from Finland and Ireland, and involved a series of Exchange Seminars between EQUAL DPs and public service broadcasters from ten Member States. It brought together DPs from Finland, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK with members of the Eurovision Intercultural & Diversity Group of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to develop a Diversity Toolkit for the Media, especially for use in television.

The Toolkit concentrates on the representation of ethnic and cultural minorities and especially their portrayal in news and current affairs programmes. It is mainly aimed at journalists and teachers and students of journalism but it also provides useful information for HR departments and the management of broadcasting organisations. In November 2007, the Toolkit was presented in Paris at an international conference on Integration and Diversity, organised by France Télévisions and UNESCO, and at the EQUAL conference on Acting against Ethnic Discrimination in Employment.

	The Cultural Diversity Toolkit
	Launching the Platform: Diversity, the Offspring of a Media Marriage in Dublin (Feb 2007)
	Finalising the Toolkit: Helping the Media to reflect a Much wider Audience (Oct 2007)

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Outcomes from ETG1 (2004)

ETG1 generated a number of documents on outcomes from EQUAL Round 1 that also informed further developments in Round 2. The documents that can be accessed through the links listed below are based on contributions from a working group which focused on Ethnic Minorities and Migrants.

			The Contribution of EQUAL to the Full Implementation of the Equality in Employment and Racial Equality Directives - the report
			The Contribution of EQUAL to the Full Implementation of the Equality in Employment and Racial Equality Directives -  a summary
			Equality, the Labour force and the Law - EQUAL supports the implementation of the directives on racial equality and on equality in employment - Policy brief
			Equality, the Labour force and the Law – linked background documentation
			Reflecting the Colours of the World - Media, diversity and discrimination - Policy brief

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Practical examples of the work of Development Partnerships

Overview: Thematic Clusters and Approaches of DPs

		DPs working with Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities - Approaches - 2006
		DPs working with Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities - Thematic Clusters - 2006
		DPs Working with Roma Communities - Approaches - 2007
		DPs Working with Roma Communities - Thematic Clusters - 2006
		DPs Working on Media and Anti-Discrimination - Approaches - 2007
		DPs Working on Media and Anti-Discrimination - Thematic Clusters - 2006
		National thematic networks: a key for tackling "racial" discrimination - 2006
		FR, PT - National networks of DPs tackling discrimination against immigrants and ethnic minorities - 2006
		New Approaches to Improving the Integration of Migrants and Ethnic Minorities into the Labour Market

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Increasing Enrolment in Vocational Training

EQUAL projects have developed new further education programmes that build on immigrants' existing qualifications and offer them new perspectives for employment and occupational advancement in jobs that require intercultural competences. Examples include new courses that prepared immigrants, who held a relevant qualification, for work as intercultural counsellors or mentors, or for setting up their own business.

		AT - Laying New Tracks for the Vocational Integration and Career advancement of Immigrants - 2007
		DE - Networking for Intercultural Guidance and Labour Market Integration - 2007
		National networks of DPs tackling discrimination against immigrants and ethnic minorities
		ES - A Long Road to Full Integration - 2007
		FI - Preparation for integration - 2006
		HU - Creating Roma Entrepreneurs - 2007
		IT - Forging a Strong Regional Partnership - 2007
		UKgb - B-Equal - The Bradford Equality Employment project

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Valuing Migrants' Competences and Acquired Skills

In most EU Member States, the qualifications of third country immigrants are not formally recognised and because their potential is not perceived by employment intermediaries and the business world, many immigrants have to accept jobs which require a level of skills below the qualifications that they had originally obtained. EQUAL DPs have sought solutions to this problem by ensuring that employment and training intermediaries, relevant multipliers and immigrant workers are well informed about how to navigate through the complicated web of administrative regulations that hinder the recognition of qualifications. They have also piloted more flexible ways of ascertaining, profiling and validating immigrants' skills.

		AT - Laying New Tracks for the Vocational Integration and Career advancement of Immigrants - 2007
		DE - Networking for Intercultural Guidance and Labour Market Integration - 2007
		DE - Migranet-A Stakeholder Network for the Integration of Migrants
		FI - Preparation for integration - 2006
		PT- Emprego Apoiado - Supported Employment

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Awareness Raising, Sensitisation and making Active Use of the Media

Dismantling preconceptions about ethnic origin and other characteristics that stand in the way of immigrants' integration and active participation in employment is both an economic and a social necessity and this stance has been central to EQUAL's approach to combating racism and xenophobia. The vocational, and also the social, integration of ethnic minorities can be greatly facilitated if public attitudes in the local community are broadly supportive of their needs and interests. A number of DPs had a special focus on investigating new means and techniques of creating a more positive climate by soliciting active support from the media and some of these projects were even initiated by the Media Industries.

		NL - Another type of Euro-vision - 2006
		EL - Reaching out through Radio - 2007
		FI - What a Colourful World! - 2007
		HU - Roma-vision - 2007

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New professional profiles to support Integration: Mediation, Mentoring, Tutoring

Many DPs strongly argued the case for the enhanced involvement of intercultural mediators and counsellors in the management of the integration process. They emphasised the pivotal role that mediators, "path-planners", mentors, tutors and "multipliers" could play in bridging the gap between the immigrant community and employers or public services and in providing individual guidance and follow-up for people who had various types of disadvantage. These new operators also worked as brokers who, on a one to one basis, linked individual needs to opportunities, matched people to jobs and provided continuing assistance for a period after the placement, both to the individuals and to their employers.

		AT - Laying New Tracks for the Vocational Integration and Career advancement of Immigrants - 2007
		DE - Networking for Intercultural Guidance and Labour Market Integration - 2007
		DE - Roma and Sinti: Employment through Self-organisation
		ES - No More Tilting at Windmills - 2006
		ES - A Long Road to Full Integration - 2007
		FI - Majakka-Supported Employment Services for Migrants
		IE - Training roma as cultural mediators - 2006
		IT - Forging a Strong Regional Partnership - 2007
		LT - New Avenues for the Integration of Roma - 2007
		PT - An integrated approach to diversity management - 2006

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Mobilising Corporate Social Responsibility to tackle Racial Discrimination

The debate on the concepts of "Responsible Entrepreneurship" and "Corporate Social Responsibility" (CSR) has gained momentum in recent years. This debate offers a new framework for harnessing CSR in favour of immigrants and minorities and for a constructive dialogue between employers, trade unions and the public sector on this issue. EQUAL DPs have demonstrated how this dialogue can be used to mobilise employers and trade unions to become involved in the integration of these disadvantaged groups. In a number of cases, they have also been the driving forces in developing and promoting formalised "codes of conduct" or "diversity charters" that seek to harness the development of Corporate Social Responsibility in favour of immigrant minorities, by articulating action against ethnic discrimination with the issue of CSR.

		FR - A National Thematic Network to tackle Racial Discrimination - 2006
		FR - Partners in Fighting Racial Discrimination - 2006
		FR - Mobilising Employers-A Commitment to Non-Discrimination
		IT - AHEAD-Non-Discrimination within SMEs
		PT- Emprego Apoiado - Supported Employment

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Promoting Non-biased Recruitment

A number of DPs piloted new approaches to ensuring fair recruitment procedures. They advocated that, in order to prevent any discrimination, the selection criteria to be applied in recruitment should be exclusively based on a critical analysis of the tasks involved in each individual vacant job and of the skills and competences required for accomplishing them. DPs found that such objective recruitment methods helped to match employers' needs and applicants' abilities and also to dismantle pre-conceptions about alleged job requirements that could exclude candidates from immigrant or ethnic minorities.

		BEnl - Tapping the employment potential of SMEs - 2005
		BEnl - Tapping the employment potential of SMEs - short version - 2005
		FI - Preparation for integration - 2006
		FR - Partners in Fighting Racial Discrimination - 2006
		SE - FAIR-Future Adapted Inclusive Recruitment

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Offering Expertise and Support Services to Employers

The position of the social partners is vital in promoting "non-discriminatory" practices and EQUAL placed much emphasis on their involvement. In a number of EQUAL projects, large companies played a pivotal role in developing methods and tools for fair recruitment and in implementing diversity strategies. They also provided credible role models for other employers. However, progress was also made in mobilising small and medium sized enterprises which are often less concerned about diversity. EQUAL succeeded in soliciting support from many SME unions or associations and an important factor in this was the range of services that had been established by DPs to help SMEs to build up a diverse workforce to strengthen their business.

		DE - Valuing competence and diversity - 2005
		ES - No More Tilting at Windmills - 2006
		PT - An integrated approach to diversity management - 2006
		SE - Business Performance through better Diversity Strategies
		SE - Towns Together - Networking for Empowerment and Business Development
		UKgb - B-Equal - The Bradford Equality Employment project
		UKgb - Making Ethnic Diversity a Business Advantage

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Mobilising action by Trade Unions

Much more than previous generations of Community Initiatives, the work of EQUAL also benefited from the active participation of Trade Unions in developing workplaces that were "welcoming" to people from immigrant and ethnic minority communities. Examples of DPs that had a strong involvement of trade union organisations illustrate how Trade Unions were able to induce change by sensitising shop stewards to discriminatory practices in the workplace and by initiating preventive measures. They introduced new forms of training for union representatives, piloted new mediation roles and services to facilitate the integration of migrant and ethnic minority workers and encouraged new active union membership of workers from ethnic minorities.

		AT - Changing perceptions of immigration: from threat to opportunity - 2005
		AT - Changing perceptions of immigration: from threat to opportunity - short version - 2005
		BEnl - Bring More Colour to the Workplace
		IT - Etno-Segregation - Trade Union Actors as Equality Counsellors
		UKgb - One Workplace Equal Rights

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Integrated Territorial Approaches

EQUAL experience demonstrates that local and regional authorities are particularly well placed to coordinate responses to the range of problems that can undermine the precarious employment situation of ethnic minorities, which includes language deficits, lack of recognised qualifications and housing problems and also entrenched prejudices and gaps in intercultural communication between the indigenous society and immigrant communities. Almost no other single group of actors has a greater capacity for leadership and for the coordination and pooling of resources in this field. DPs have shown how this capacity can be used to design initiatives that adopt an integrated approach and involve all relevant public and private actors in their implementation.

		CZ - POLIS-Local Action against Social Exclusion
		DE - ALBuM-A Territorial Action Plan for Integrating Migrant Workers
		ES - Equality in Diversity - A Network to foster Immigrants': Employment

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