The Territorial Embeddedness of Novel Labour Integration Policy: Something Old, Something New and Something Borrowed

Abstract

This paper examines how local governments can develop new practices in labour integration policy through cross-sector collaborations, and the role of territorial embeddedness in enabling them. The paper is informed by three initiatives for labour market integration of immigrants led by the city district of an urban suburb in the city of Göteborg, in collaboration with actors from the public sector, private sector, and civil society. The paper contributes to research into institutional entrepreneurship and local governments. First, it shows the importance of undermining old, or traditional, practices in labour market integration as part of the process of developing new ones. It also reveals how new practices and organizational forms are added to existing ones, instead of replacing them. Thus, expanding the scope of the public sector in the local labour market integration policy field through elaborative rather than radical change. Second, it reveals the importance to diffuse the new practices, beyond the boundaries of the collaboration that facilitates their creation. Third, the paper illustrates how, rather than hindering, the territorial embeddedness of these collaborative coalitions in marginalized urban suburbs provides access to a wide repertoire of resources, practices, and ideas to facilitate change. Paradoxically, the territorial embeddedness also hampered the diffusion of new practices in the broader field of labour market integration.