Search

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a detailed overview of the UK legal and institutional factors at the macro-level that can be regarded as decisive for explaining the effective capacity of the country to integrate migrants, refugees and asylum seekers into the labour market. By doing so, we aim to better understand the conditions within which integration policies for migrants, refugees and asylum applicants (MRA) may take place. We begin by providing an insight into the social and cultural context of migration in the UK, firstly by looking at the history of migration and the social and political instabilities of the country. Furthermore, we investigate how legislation concerning migration and asylum has developed within the UK context across the decades and analyse how legislation has been translated by UK policymakers in recent years. We then examine the current constitutional organisation of the British state, highlighting the importance of case law in developing MRA integration. Following this, we outline key legislation concerning the integration of MRA in the British labour market. The chapter then provides a critical overview of the integration strategies (or the lack thereof) promoted at the national level, outlining the institutional challenges that affect integration. We then conclude by highlighting the possible impact that Brexit will have on an already ‘hostile environment’ for migration.

Literature in the field of employability and the third sector has focused upon the impact of marketisation on third sector providers, elaborating how commissioning processes have led to a contraction of (smaller) third sector organisations (TSOs) and an expansion of larger private sector bodies. Extant research does not however explore the role of third sector organisations in the employability of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Therefore, our paper explores this gap by adopting a qualitative approach via a total of 36 interviews involving migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and managers of third sector organisations, alongside a categorisation of TSOs. Our findings reveal that TSOs are the primary (and for asylum seekers perhaps the only) providers of integration support services and training or education services. We found that only a limited number of organisations provide formal employability services or skills development services which seem to be only residual in terms of the range of activities that TSOs can organise. Thus, perhaps the main function that TSOs perform that enables integration into the UK labour market is providing a safe and trusted environment that people can use to increase their confidence, improve their well-being, broaden their social circle, learn the language or increase their work experience.

The discourse of deservingness has been mobilised against certain groups in the UK society navigating UK labour markets, among them refugees and asylum seekers. These discourses, leading to the stigmatisation of the unemployed are coupled with an emphasis on the importance of individuals taking responsibility to develop their ‘employability’. Little attention has been paid to scrutinise the contrast between the deservingness rhetoric and policy making with the actual conditions newcomers, and in particular refugees and asylum seekers, are confronted with when seeking employment. Our paper fills such a gap by indicating key contradictions at the heart of labour market integration in the UK. On the one hand, the emphasis on deservingness is coupled with policy discourses that construct an environment shaped by welfare and labour market chauvinism. On the other hand, the policy architecture is fundamentally flawed in a number of ways in terms of the support mechanisms necessary to ensure that newcomers can successfully integrate into the labour market.

In recent years, music‐based interventions have been utilised as a tool for improving public health, reducing inequalities and promoting well‐being of young people. Although some researchers have begun to draw links between music‐related interventions and positive health outcomes, there is little understanding as to how such effects are produced. Realist evaluations—understanding what works, for whom and under what circumstances—are a particularly apt means by which we can open this ‘black box’. In this paper, we use a realist evaluation to assess a community‐based music initiative designed and implemented to support the well‐being of disadvantaged young people in Scotland. In order to gain perspectives on the range of contextual characteristics, mechanisms and outcomes, we collected quantitative and qualitative data in the form of pre‐ and post‐questionnaires, as well as conducting interviews with beneficiaries and stakeholders. Our findings show that the intervention achieved a positive impact on the self‐confidence, well‐being and engagement of disadvantaged young people. This impact was achieved via an approach personally tailored to the individual needs of the young people; and an organisational environment characterised by trust, whereby young people felt safe to express themselves.

The Social Innovation Fund (SIF) - funded by Scottish Government and the European Social Fund - adopts a ‘public venture capital’ model to support socially innovative organisations. This article critically explores the use of public venture capital programmes to fund and grow the social economy through the case study of Heavy Sound Community Interest Company. We conclude that, while SIF funding helped Heavy Sound to scale-up an effective intervention in the short term, further significant scaling might undermine the project’s success and long-term sustainability was not assured. We call for further research into the long-term consequences of public venture capital programmes coming to an end, including coordinated evaluation of the SIF.

Since the late 1990s social enterprises have been increasingly utilised as a means of delivering of health and social care services. However, there is little evidence on if, and how, provision by social enterprise might achieve positive health outcomes, particularly in comparison to other modes of delivery. In this paper, we draw upon the multiple perspectives offered by stakeholders involved in a rural social enterprise initiative based in Scotland, UK, and in a nearby comparator public sector organisation. Both types of organisation aim to increase the physical activity levels of people with chronic health conditions. In order to gain perspectives on the range of mechanisms and outcomes involved in different types of organisation providing similar interventions, realist evaluation of data gathered from in-depth semi-structured interviews (n = 68) was undertaken. Interviews were carried out with beneficiaries, service providers and external stakeholders and Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) configurations developed to support our explanations for how, and in what ways, social enterprise might impact differently on health. Our findings highlight that the social enterprise is differentiated from the publicly-run service in two distinct ways: firstly, the social enterprise was better able to flexibly deliver a bespoke programme designed around the needs of service users; and secondly, their role as a community ‘boundary spanner’ helped facilitate strong ties and feelings of connectedness between beneficiaries, organisational staff and community stakeholders. However, these advantages were significantly compromised when funding was constrained. Our findings serve as an important basis for future research to better understand the means by which social enterprises might deliver health outcomes, particularly in comparison with public sector providers.

Community Orientated and Opportunity Learning (COOL) Music was a 12-month collaborative project between researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University and practitioners at the Edinburgh-based social enterprise Heavy Sound. The project began in October 2017 and involved 16 sessions of participatory music making with 32 ‘hard-to-reach’ young people (aged 12–17) aimed at increasing confidence and self-esteem and improving social skills. Using COOL Music as a case study, this article explores some of the challenges faced by community-based arts organisations tasked with delivering such interventions, contrasting COOL Music’s small-scale, targeted, community-based approach with prevailing top-down music interventions in Scotland. We argue that such programmes are particularly suitable in engaging those at the margins of society, reaching them on their own terms through music that resonates with their own lived experience. However, we acknowledge the short-term and transitory nature of such projects may prove problematic for some hard-to-reach groups who require more stability in their lives and may also lead to staff fatigue and burnout. We call for further research in these areas, and greater policy attention to be paid to the sustainability of such projects.

In this paper we apply the established ‘neo-contingency approach’ from organizational theory into the field of community-led social ventures which, by necessity, have to be embedded within their local community context in order to achieve their social mission. Through our analysis of three heterogeneous case studies from around rural Japan, we show how the external environment and contingencies affect leadership style and the pattern of social capital, influencing the type of community development apparent in each setting. We propose that local contingencies, such as external environment, leadership and social capital, play a role in influencing organizational culture in community-led social ventures and, indeed, the form that the social venture takes. We conclude by arguing that if the neo-contingency approach is to fulfil its potential then further theoretical and conceptual development is required.

Social Impact Assessment (SIA) is a mantra for nonprofit studies in recent years and for foundations in particular which are considered to be well-positioned to measure the impact of their grants. This paper aims to explore what foundations mean with impact, the ways they measure it and the barriers in performing evaluations. Its mixed method approach includes an extensive documentary analysis of 196 foundations, complemented by 10 in-depth interviews with informants of 13 foundations which use different methods of evaluation. From our analysis, the degree of foundations’ disclosure on SIA is low, and no common meaning of social impact exists. Foundations prefer qualitative methods for data collection rather than quantitative ones. The reasons behind SIA are primarily based on internal considerations concerning foundations’ legitimacy, and the lack of professional staff is a major barrier. The findings challenge foundations’ accountability and knowledge sharing, fundamental to fostering peer dialogue and increasing participatory evaluations.

The centrality of the third sector in the co-production of public services is seemingly based on the assumption that it can act as an effective proxy for service users. However, the third sector encompasses a broad range of organisational forms, interests and governance arrangements, which all have implications for the type and nature of relationships between the sector and its constituencies. Through analysis of empirical data drawn from research on a prominent co-production model in Scotland, we construct and present a typology of different approaches to service user involvement.