Social innovation as a process: pursuing a pathway to the labour market inclusion of refugee women in Berlin

Abstract

This article analyses the pathway pursued to engage key stakeholders in a Social Innovation (SI) governance process to achieve better inclusion of refugee women in the Berlin labour market. Thereby, special emphasis is placed on the contribution of the local university as the lead partner to realise this objective. Results indicate how the university provided the groundwork for the engagement of representatives in relevant public authorities and administration. These in turn activated together with the target group and civil society initiatives to initiate a SI governance process that led within the three-year timeframe to intensifying communication among the diverse key stakeholders. The co-creation of the pilots and the learnings gained from testing these, including the feedback from the refugee women, themselves, resulted in a shared problem awareness. This in turn, due to the relative frequency of feedback in roundtables, dialogue workshops, etc., led in its final year to an expressed interest to form a strategy group to spell out the mutually agreed upon principles for new policies. Outlining central aspects of this social innovative journey leads to identifying valuable insights for future initiatives that could be developed in comparable contexts for a more positive inclusion of refugee women.