TITLE:
Labour Market Integration of Status Holders in Amsterdam —Challenges Faced by Caseworkers to Integrate Status Holders into Labour Market
AUTHORS:
Ali Chakari
KEYWORDS:
Refugees, Status Holders, Labour Market Integration, Caseworkers, Frontline Workers, Dutch Participation Law
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.10 No.4,
July
27,
2022
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.