The Role of Civil Society in the Labour Market Integration of Migrants in Europe: An Introduction

This paper serves as an introduction to a special issue that discusses the role of civil society in the labour market integration of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in six European countries: the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Italy, Switzerland and the UK. The paper presents a typology of civil society’s involvement in migrant labour integration—a policy-contested field— based on the relationship between non-profit and public sector organisations. Such ideal-type models are traditional public administration delivery, co-management, co-production with a partial or non-existent role for public sector organisations, and full co-production. In the six countries covered by the special issue, the existing relationship between the public sector and the civil society sector is affected by the specific social, cultural and economic contexts that underpin both their labour markets and welfare states. Although one model predominates in each of the six countries, in different ways and with different mechanisms, in all of them there is a trend towards the development of coproduction whereby the state plays either a central or a residual role.