Labour Market Integration of Status Holders in Amsterdam <br/>—Challenges Faced by Caseworkers to Integrate Status Holders into Labour Market

Abstract

There has been a lot of scholarly work on the role of frontline workers in fostering labour market integration of status holders. The challenges and dilemmas newcomers and caseworkers face are also discussed comprehensively. However, there is still a need to focus on the obstacles that caseworkers are facing during the coaching of status holders towards labour market integration. This article is meant to find out the challenges that caseworkers are facing during the coaching of status holders towards labour market integration. It mainly focuses on the challenges that are primarily caused by the participation law that caseworkers have to implement. On the one hand, the participation law demands caseworkers to help status holders to labour market integration. Whereas, on the other hand, the law indirectly demotivates status holders to accept a job. The findings show that the participation law makes it difficult for caseworkers to achieve their goals. For this article, I have interviewed 26 caseworkers to collect data. This is one-third of the caseworkers for status holders in the City of Amsterdam. The caseworkers were selected from all the seven districts of Amsterdam and they were from different age groups (25 to 65). In addition, I have carried out 15 participatory observations with the focus on how caseworkers interact, motivate and deal with their clients as far as labour market integration is concerned.