Action Research: A Participatory Approach to Improve Measures of Labour Market Integration of Refugees

Abstract

This paper illustrates the benefits action research adds to successfully co-creating measures for the labour market integration of refugees. Germany has become one of the most popular immigration countries in the world. In addition to current refugee flows from Ukraine, migration from third countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey again increased in 2022. Compared to Ukrainians, who are subject to a special measure granting immediate and temporary protection in the event of a mass influx and direct access to the labour market, third-country representatives still have a limited path to the world of work. Following these events, this paper is motivated by the early research on developing measures for the labour market integration of refugees in Germany. It was conducted shortly after the so-called European “refugee crises” during 2015–2017. Due to increasing refugee movements, the findings are highly topical and thus make a renewed contribution to integration policies and action research as a participatory approach.