Labour market activation and newly arrived immigrants

The idea of an ‘active welfare state’has led to the expectation that welfare institutions such as the PCSW not merely offer a ‘passive’form of social assistance, but also invest in citizens and promote social integration, and more particularly through employment whenever possible (Carpentier, 2016; Dumont, 2012; Hermans, 2005). Beneficiaries of a social integration income are expected to make the necessary efforts to take steps in this direction. Put differently,‘disposition to work’(being ready and available to work) is a condition to access–and keep–social benefits (see Chapt... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Sousa Martins da Costa Santos, Adriana
Vandermeerschen, Hanne
Mescoli, Elsa
Dokumenttyp: bookPart
Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
Verlag/Hrsg.: Leuven University Press
Schlagwörter: migration / welfare state / newcomers / belgium / labour market activation
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-29360255
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/2078/289608

The idea of an ‘active welfare state’has led to the expectation that welfare institutions such as the PCSW not merely offer a ‘passive’form of social assistance, but also invest in citizens and promote social integration, and more particularly through employment whenever possible (Carpentier, 2016; Dumont, 2012; Hermans, 2005). Beneficiaries of a social integration income are expected to make the necessary efforts to take steps in this direction. Put differently,‘disposition to work’(being ready and available to work) is a condition to access–and keep–social benefits (see Chapter 4; see also Hermans, 2005; Van Parys, 2016). In this chapter, we focus on labour market activation of newly arrived immigrant beneficiaries, as part of the guidance and service provision towards this target group. In a first section, we dwell on the perspective on ‘socio-professional integration’1–the emic term that reflects labour market activation policies in our case studies and in Belgium more generally–in PCSW services, exploring how they interpret this term and, by consequence, which goals are set by the social workers. To do so, we rely both on the results of the online survey, presented first, and on the data collected during the fieldwork. Next, in a second section, we discuss the role of the PCSW and its social workers in terms of guidance towards socio-professional integration. We also consider that the PCSWs are not the only actors involved in this process, as there are also public employment services for example, as well as other organisations, whose mission is labour market activation.