| 1. |
- Kotze, Shelley, 1986, et al.
(author)
-
The role of trust in street-level organisations within integration projects
- 2019
-
In: The 17th Annual ESPANET Conference: “Social citizenship, migration and conflict – Equality and opportunity in European welfare states”, The European Network for Social Policy Analysis, 5–7 September 2019, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Swedish immigrant integration holds a unique contradiction in that it is lauded as having the ‘best’ policy in Europe (MIPEX), but its outcomes are amongst some of the poorest (Eurostats). Currently, responsibility of implementing integration policy is held by national agencies at the macro-level. Such a structure, however, is likely to overshadow what goes on at the micro-level, an oversight which is also reflected within current research. By adopting a street-level organisation (SLOs) approach, this research sets out to explore the gap between formal policy provision and measurable outcomes, where trust is situated as a critical dimension within the process of integration that is yet to be captured by other means. This presentation explores trust as a reason for the disparity between policy and outcomes, with the help of a case study that involves an SLO situated in Gothenburg; more specifically, a suburb characterised by a 90% immigrant population, and its unexploited social capital. To resolve this issue Gothenburg embarked on a four-year EU sponsored project concerned with labour market integration. Under this umbrella, a sub-project has been launched to engage 500 immigrants visiting an SLO within green business development as a means to integration. However, while initially promising, several intricacies surrounding the studied SLO, including its structure, history and leadership, has brought forth a number of worrying insights that have severed trust-building and impeded future work. Previous studies exploring the success of projects at the street level have successfully used qualitative methods, including reflexive non-participant observation. In our research we have used field notes collected over a six-month period from the project’s inception, supplemented by time lines of interactions and stakeholder engagements. The data have been coded to decipher key incidents and exchanges where trust has played a pivotal role in the dynamics between stakeholders, and for the direction of the project, as such. Given the responsibility that SLOs currently hold within immigrant integration, the personal street-level interactions from which (dis)trust evolves need to be regarded as significantly important. Our findings suggest that trust is greatly underestimated within SLOs, with distrust disrupting the success of the integration process, often resulting in project failure. This presentation will make recommendations as to how a SLO approach can contribute to trust-building, which will go some way in addressing existing ambiguities and inconsistencies between policy and outcomes concerning immigrant integration.
|
|
| 2. |
- Kotze, Shelley, 1986, et al.
(author)
-
Double jeopardy within Swedish integration: Using South–North collaborations to explore the role of gender within transdisciplinary integration projects
- 2019
-
In: International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2019: “Joining Forces for Change”, TD-Net – Network for Transdisciplinary Research / Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, 10–13 September 2019, Gothenburg, Sweden.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Sweden is now a highly multicultural society, and as such is dealing with a multiplicity of integration issues. Accordingly, approaches to integration must also be multifaceted in their nature, conducted by transdisciplinary teams within a diverse range of projects. The current approach is to integrate immigrants into the labour market, for which a lauded policy has been implemented (MIPEX). However, when looking at outcomes, the OECD data (2013) is placing Sweden at the bottom of its ranking, with 57% of 15-74-year-olds born outside of Sweden in employment, compared to 67% of native-born Swedes. A possible reason for the gap is the relatively high proportion of native-born women in employment. But, this does not explain why immigrant women’s levels of employment are consistently 10% lower than immigrant men’s. This creates a gender gap between immigrant men and women, and a gap between native-born and immigrant women. As such, immigrant women are experiencing a double-jeopardy in labour-market integration, both as women and as immigrants. Studies exploring instances of the double-jeopardy problem have been conducted in the US (De Jong et al 2001), Canada (Boyd 1984), Australia (Foroutan 2008) and Israel (Reijman & Semyonov 1997). However, this research is still considered novel as it utilises transdisciplinarity to explore the ways in which gender is being used to inform the process of integration. Drawing on the conceptualisation of transdisciplinarity from Zurich 2000, this research draws from a diversity of different projects and approaches to address the real-world problem of double jeopardy experienced by immigrant women. It does so by exploring the experiences and reflections from academics and researchers; government employees; sustainability strategists; social entrepreneurs and NGO volunteer and staff. The projects led by these actors are linked by the aim of providing social integration and the use of the concept of gender in doing so, albeit some more explicitly than others. This presentation explores how the hypothesis of double jeopardy plays out in practice. The aim of our research is to understand the ways in which a transdiciplinarity of actors apply the concept of gender within labour market integration and how this affects tangible outcomes for women. This has been undertaken through a South–North collaboration, using a Swedish-Kenyan collaboration programme within Mistra Urban Futures – SKILLs, aiming towards sustainable urban development. Our research applies a gender analysis of local case studies from impoverished areas of Gothenburg. The discussion is informed by challenges (and solutions) identified in Kisumu (Kenya) and provides a set of co-produced recommendations. The following research questions are pursued: 1. How does labour-market integration consider and use the concept of gender? 2. What effect(s) does the use of gender have upon the outcomes for women within labour-market integration projects? 3. How can the use of the concept of gender be improved within labour-market integration to provide outcomes for women that are equal, fair and sustainable? Initial findings suggest that gender as a concept is experienced differently by immigrant women and Swedish women. In questioning how women from the Global South experience integration projects in the context of the Global North, the collaboration has identified the following aspects: agency; choice of approach; cultural awareness; role modelling; stereotyping and; tokenism – within transdisciplinary projects from both research sites. With these challenges in mind, some integration projects may prove problematic at best and unsuccessful at worst because of this under-researched dimension.
|
|
| 3. |
- Kotze, Shelley, 1986, et al.
(author)
-
Using South-North collaborations to explore the role of gender within immigrant integration projects
- 2019
-
In: 2019 RINGS Conference: “Genders and Feminisms in a Polarised World – Sustainability, Futures and Utopias”, The International Research Association of Institutions of Advanced Gender Studies / Tallinn University – Gender Studies Research Group, 2–4 October 2019, Tallinn, Estonia.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- One of Sweden’s current predicaments is that it is a highly multicultural society in a European context, facing a crisis through the vulnerability and anxieties relating to the increasing immigrant populations being closely related to an increasing polarisation. In a polarised society, gender is at risk of again becoming the invisible “third” face of policies trying to facilitate migration, overwhelmed by the complexity and jeopardies of integration and disintegration, homogeneity and diversity, equality and inequality, inclusion and exclusion. Sweden has developed a lauded policy, most particularly within the formal opportunities offered to immigrants when accessing the labour-market (MIPEX). However, the index does not measure the outcomes of such policy. The OECD data (2013) is placing Sweden at the bottom of its ranking, as it has the largest gap, in levels of employment between native-born Swedes and those born outside of Sweden. Possible reasoning for the gap is the relatively high proportion of native-born women in employment. When immigrant employment numbers are explored along gendered lines immigrant women’s levels of employment are consistently 10% lower than those of immigrant men. This not only creates a gender gap between immigrant men and women, but also a gap between native-born and immigrant women. As such, immigrant women are experiencing a double-jeopardy in labour-market integration, both as women and as immigrants. Therefore, we ask if intersectional actors are taken into account in designing policies; how they reflect the differences of immigrant women trying to integrate; and how can immigrant women change Swedish society and its labour force? This presentation explores how the hypothesis of double-jeopardy plays out in practice. The aim of our research is to understand the ways in which different approaches to labour-market integration apply the concept of gender, and how this affects the tangible and sustainable outcomes for the women involved. This will be undertaken through a South–North collaboration, using a Swedish-Kenyan collaboration programme within Mistra Urban Futures – SKILLs, aiming towards sustainable urban development. Drawing upon experiences and reflections from works of academics, researchers and NGOs, our research applies a gender analysis of local case studies from impoverished areas of Gothenburg. The discussion is informed by challenges (and solutions) identified in Kisumu, and provides a set of co-produced recommendations. Initial findings suggest that gender as a concept is experienced differently by immigrant women and Swedish women. In questioning how women from the Global South experience integration projects in the context of the Global North we attempt to initiate discussion how labour-market integration can produce more tangible, sustainable and equitable outcomes for immigrant women.
|
|
| 4. |
- Kotze, Shelley, 1986, et al.
(author)
-
Double jeopardy within Swedish integration: Using South–North collaborations to explore the role of gender within transdisciplinary integration projects
- 2019
-
In: International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2019: “Joining Forces for Change”, TD-Net – Network for Transdisciplinary Research / Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, 10–13 September 2019, Gothenburg, Sweden.
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Sweden is now a highly multicultural society, and as such is dealing with a multiplicity of integration issues. Accordingly, approaches to integration must also be multifaceted in their nature, conducted by transdisciplinary teams within a diverse range of projects. The current approach is to integrate immigrants into the labour market, for which a lauded policy has been implemented (MIPEX). However, when looking at outcomes, the OECD data (2013) is placing Sweden at the bottom of its ranking, with 57% of 15-74-year-olds born outside of Sweden in employment, compared to 67% of native-born Swedes. A possible reason for the gap is the relatively high proportion of native-born women in employment. But, this does not explain why immigrant women’s levels of employment are consistently 10% lower than immigrant men’s. This creates a gender gap between immigrant men and women, and a gap between native-born and immigrant women. As such, immigrant women are experiencing a double-jeopardy in labour-market integration, both as women and as immigrants. Studies exploring instances of the double-jeopardy problem have been conducted in the US (De Jong et al 2001), Canada (Boyd 1984), Australia (Foroutan 2008) and Israel (Reijman & Semyonov 1997). However, this research is still considered novel as it utilises transdisciplinarity to explore the ways in which gender is being used to inform the process of integration. Drawing on the conceptualisation of transdisciplinarity from Zurich 2000, this research draws from a diversity of different projects and approaches to address the real-world problem of double jeopardy experienced by immigrant women. It does so by exploring the experiences and reflections from academics and researchers; government employees; sustainability strategists; social entrepreneurs and NGO volunteer and staff. The projects led by these actors are linked by the aim of providing social integration and the use of the concept of gender in doing so, albeit some more explicitly than others. This presentation explores how the hypothesis of double jeopardy plays out in practice. The aim of our research is to understand the ways in which a transdiciplinarity of actors apply the concept of gender within labour market integration and how this affects tangible outcomes for women. This has been undertaken through a South–North collaboration, using a Swedish-Kenyan collaboration programme within Mistra Urban Futures – SKILLs, aiming towards sustainable urban development. Our research applies a gender analysis of local case studies from impoverished areas of Gothenburg. The discussion is informed by challenges (and solutions) identified in Kisumu (Kenya) and provides a set of co-produced recommendations. The following research questions are pursued: 1. How does labour-market integration consider and use the concept of gender? 2. What effect(s) does the use of gender have upon the outcomes for women within labour-market integration projects? 3. How can the use of the concept of gender be improved within labour-market integration to provide outcomes for women that are equal, fair and sustainable? Initial findings suggest that gender as a concept is experienced differently by immigrant women and Swedish women. In questioning how women from the Global South experience integration projects in the context of the Global North, the collaboration has identified the following aspects: agency; choice of approach; cultural awareness; role modelling; stereotyping and; tokenism – within transdisciplinary projects from both research sites. With these challenges in mind, some integration projects may prove problematic at best and unsuccessful at worst because of this under-researched dimension.
|
|
| 5. |
- Kotze, Shelley, 1986, et al.
(author)
-
Using South-North collaborations to explore the role of gender within immigrant integration projects
- 2019
-
In: 2019 RINGS Conference: “Genders and Feminisms in a Polarised World – Sustainability, Futures and Utopias”, The International Research Association of Institutions of Advanced Gender Studies / Tallinn University – Gender Studies Research Group, 2–4 October 2019, Tallinn, Estonia.
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- One of Sweden’s current predicaments is that it is a highly multicultural society in a European context, facing a crisis through the vulnerability and anxieties relating to the increasing immigrant populations being closely related to an increasing polarisation. In a polarised society, gender is at risk of again becoming the invisible “third” face of policies trying to facilitate migration, overwhelmed by the complexity and jeopardies of integration and disintegration, homogeneity and diversity, equality and inequality, inclusion and exclusion. Sweden has developed a lauded policy, most particularly within the formal opportunities offered to immigrants when accessing the labour-market (MIPEX). However, the index does not measure the outcomes of such policy. The OECD data (2013) is placing Sweden at the bottom of its ranking, as it has the largest gap, in levels of employment between native-born Swedes and those born outside of Sweden. Possible reasoning for the gap is the relatively high proportion of native-born women in employment. When immigrant employment numbers are explored along gendered lines immigrant women’s levels of employment are consistently 10% lower than those of immigrant men. This not only creates a gender gap between immigrant men and women, but also a gap between native-born and immigrant women. As such, immigrant women are experiencing a double-jeopardy in labour-market integration, both as women and as immigrants. Therefore, we ask if intersectional actors are taken into account in designing policies; how they reflect the differences of immigrant women trying to integrate; and how can immigrant women change Swedish society and its labour force? This presentation explores how the hypothesis of double-jeopardy plays out in practice. The aim of our research is to understand the ways in which different approaches to labour-market integration apply the concept of gender, and how this affects the tangible and sustainable outcomes for the women involved. This will be undertaken through a South–North collaboration, using a Swedish-Kenyan collaboration programme within Mistra Urban Futures – SKILLs, aiming towards sustainable urban development. Drawing upon experiences and reflections from works of academics, researchers and NGOs, our research applies a gender analysis of local case studies from impoverished areas of Gothenburg. The discussion is informed by challenges (and solutions) identified in Kisumu, and provides a set of co-produced recommendations. Initial findings suggest that gender as a concept is experienced differently by immigrant women and Swedish women. In questioning how women from the Global South experience integration projects in the context of the Global North we attempt to initiate discussion how labour-market integration can produce more tangible, sustainable and equitable outcomes for immigrant women.
|
|
| 6. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(author)
-
The ‘Research Forum’ as a methodological tool for transdisciplinary co-production
- 2019
-
In: International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2019: “Joining Forces for Change”, TD-Net – Network for Transdisciplinary Research / Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, 10–13 September 2019, Gothenburg, Sweden.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Transdisciplinarity connotes a strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach. Due to this insistence, it has gained widespread popularity in recent years. However, in transdisciplinary collaborations based on academic–practitioner interactions, this is not always as straightforward. In this text, we share some insights from our past and ongoing work with the project ‘Urban Rural Gothenburg’, within which we have launched the Research Forum (RF) model as a means of co-producing new transdisciplinary knowledge. RF ‘Urban Rural Gothenburg’ constitutes Mistra Urban Futures' contribution to the project ‘Urban Rural Gothenburg’, a three-year (2017–19) EU-sponsored project for sustainable development with the overarching aim to create improved conditions for green innovation and green business development between the city and the countryside. The RF constitute the project’s academic component within a transdisciplinary (penta-helix) model. The RF is meant to serve as an incubator and accelerator of various initiatives concerned with understanding, testing and implementing ecologically oriented solutions that may arise through academic–practitioner interactions. The RF is thus not a ‘place’ (in the concrete sense) but a collaborative effort of two coordinators – one practitioner and one academic, aided by an assistant, who actively pursue and facilitate new ways of extracting knowledge within a large and heterogenous project structure. Identifying and successfully matching different perspectives, points of view and pools of knowledge is a difficult challenge. This is mainly because interactions are seldom based on the same principles; different people have different foci, incentives, and agendas, while understanding how they work out in practice is key to successful implementation of the RF model. In this presentation, we focus on the description, analysis and evaluation of the RF as a methodological endeavor. The findings center on four of the most common modes of interaction encountered during our work with the RF: academics to practitioners (A > P); practitioners to academics (A < P); academics with practitioners (A >< P); and academics without practitioners (A | P). We conclude that if we truly want to embrace co-production as way to obtain new knowledge we inherently must concede part of our individuality towards a homogenous goal. At the same time, the specificity of different forms of knowledge cannot be melted into an amorphous mass, elsewise co-production is likely to become a tokenistic effort of little applicatory utility. Put simply, we must constantly remain open to change but also stay protective of knowledge that works without reinvigoration.
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| 7. |
- Kotze, Shelley, 1986, et al.
(author)
-
Ticking boxes and clocking in: A critical view of gender mainstreaming in labour-market integration
- 2019
-
In: Conference “Organizing Migration and Integration in Contemporary Societies”, Gothenburg Research Institute and Centre on Global Migration, 6–9 November 2019, Gothenburg, Sweden.
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Sweden officially adopted gender mainstreaming in 1994, launching initiatives throughout all governmental levels in 2007. This presentation focuses on gender mainstreaming in the labour-market integration of immigrant women, where levels of unemployment are consistently 10% higher than immigrant men, and are three times the level of Swedish women. We question how useful gender mainstreaming is in producing meaningful outcomes for immigrant women in this context. Our research will use a gender perspective to explore projects which cite integration as a key component of their work, located in Gothenburg’s North-East, an area characterised by its disproportionally high immigrant population, and its unexploited social capital. Our analysis will identify taken-for-granted ideologies and norms that dominate employment initiatives for immigrant women. By applying the theory of non-performativity, we suggest that a lack of understanding of the concept of gender mainstreaming results in tokenistic attempts at integration. This undermines the rationale of the deployed efforts through the reproduction of gender norms and power relations. In critically discussing the usefulness of gender mainstreaming in integration projects, our findings suggest that the concept is used as an end point itself, as opposed to a means to an end. We suggest that, in practice, gender mainstreaming is likely to contribute little more than lip-service. We therefore urge that projects move beyond counting numbers, and place more emphasis on the tangible, beneficial and equitable outcomes they produce for immigrant women.
|
|
| 8. |
- Kotze, Shelley, 1986, et al.
(author)
-
Ticking boxes and clocking in: A critical view of gender mainstreaming in labour-market integration
- 2019
-
In: Conference “Organizing Migration and Integration in Contemporary Societies”, Gothenburg Research Institute and Centre on Global Migration, 6–9 November 2019, Gothenburg, Sweden.
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Sweden officially adopted gender mainstreaming in 1994, launching initiatives throughout all governmental levels in 2007. This presentation focuses on gender mainstreaming in the labour-market integration of immigrant women, where levels of unemployment are consistently 10% higher than immigrant men, and are three times the level of Swedish women. We question how useful gender mainstreaming is in producing meaningful outcomes for immigrant women in this context. Our research will use a gender perspective to explore projects which cite integration as a key component of their work, located in Gothenburg’s North-East, an area characterised by its disproportionally high immigrant population, and its unexploited social capital. Our analysis will identify taken-for-granted ideologies and norms that dominate employment initiatives for immigrant women. By applying the theory of non-performativity, we suggest that a lack of understanding of the concept of gender mainstreaming results in tokenistic attempts at integration. This undermines the rationale of the deployed efforts through the reproduction of gender norms and power relations. In critically discussing the usefulness of gender mainstreaming in integration projects, our findings suggest that the concept is used as an end point itself, as opposed to a means to an end. We suggest that, in practice, gender mainstreaming is likely to contribute little more than lip-service. We therefore urge that projects move beyond counting numbers, and place more emphasis on the tangible, beneficial and equitable outcomes they produce for immigrant women.
|
|
| 9. |
- Kotze, Shelley, 1986, et al.
(author)
-
The role of trust in street-level organisations within integration projects
- 2019
-
In: The 17th Annual ESPANET Conference: “Social citizenship, migration and conflict – Equality and opportunity in European welfare states”, The European Network for Social Policy Analysis, 5–7 September 2019, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Swedish immigrant integration holds a unique contradiction in that it is lauded as having the ‘best’ policy in Europe (MIPEX), but its outcomes are amongst some of the poorest (Eurostats). Currently, responsibility of implementing integration policy is held by national agencies at the macro-level. Such a structure, however, is likely to overshadow what goes on at the micro-level, an oversight which is also reflected within current research. By adopting a street-level organisation (SLOs) approach, this research sets out to explore the gap between formal policy provision and measurable outcomes, where trust is situated as a critical dimension within the process of integration that is yet to be captured by other means. This presentation explores trust as a reason for the disparity between policy and outcomes, with the help of a case study that involves an SLO situated in Gothenburg; more specifically, a suburb characterised by a 90% immigrant population, and its unexploited social capital. To resolve this issue Gothenburg embarked on a four-year EU sponsored project concerned with labour market integration. Under this umbrella, a sub-project has been launched to engage 500 immigrants visiting an SLO within green business development as a means to integration. However, while initially promising, several intricacies surrounding the studied SLO, including its structure, history and leadership, has brought forth a number of worrying insights that have severed trust-building and impeded future work. Previous studies exploring the success of projects at the street level have successfully used qualitative methods, including reflexive non-participant observation. In our research we have used field notes collected over a six-month period from the project’s inception, supplemented by time lines of interactions and stakeholder engagements. The data have been coded to decipher key incidents and exchanges where trust has played a pivotal role in the dynamics between stakeholders, and for the direction of the project, as such. Given the responsibility that SLOs currently hold within immigrant integration, the personal street-level interactions from which (dis)trust evolves need to be regarded as significantly important. Our findings suggest that trust is greatly underestimated within SLOs, with distrust disrupting the success of the integration process, often resulting in project failure. This presentation will make recommendations as to how a SLO approach can contribute to trust-building, which will go some way in addressing existing ambiguities and inconsistencies between policy and outcomes concerning immigrant integration.
|
|
| 10. |
- Onyango, George Mark, et al.
(author)
-
Co-production of urban knowledge: Context approach for effective and efficient governance of cities
- 2021
-
In: Acta Scientiarum Polonorum Administratio Locorum. - : Uniwersytet Warminsko-Mazurski. - 1644-0749 .- 2450-0771. ; 20:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Effective and efficient governance is driven by policies that prevail in urban contexts. Policies are usually the result of knowledge co-production, but the efficacy of the process of translating knowledge into policy is still not well defined in the Kenyan context. One example of this is the city of Kisumu, which has been the focus of knowledge co-production by researchers from Kisumu and Gothenburg, and when there is active involvement of academics, policymakers and the private sector. The creation of networks and platforms has been instrumental in knowledge production and has allowed for multi-level co-production facilitating the governance of the city at different spatial and administrative levels. Understanding of the different contexts that have been key in the knowledge production, in turn, is important for the process of determining how these have been the drivers of urban knowledge for governance in Kisumu.
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