Integration of immigrant and minority groups
Good practice case study
URBAN I Aulnay-sous-Bois, France
The municipality of Aulnay-sous-Bois is one of the largest in the Département of Seine-Saint-Denis, in the outskirts of Paris, with a population of 80,000 and 3,200 businesses. The URBAN I project in Aulnay-sous-Bois seeked to build up relations with local employers to encourage flexible approaches to employment and to tackle discrimination. The Aulnay project did not seek to tackle the issues experienced by immigrant and minority ethnic groups directly, but instead tackled issues faced by the entire neighbourhood, including the isolation of a significant number of people from local labour markets through lack of work experience and mobility. Through building a relationship of trust, the project was able to encourage employers to take a more positive view of people coming from the local neighbourhood. This was partly achieved through setting up a local Centre for Employment and Enterprise which provided a one-stop shop for the needs of both employers and potential employees, and therefore provided a useful meeting point.
Key lessons
- Economic development, particularly if it is targeted at employment development, will only work if it is based on local businesses and local development is only effective if one authority has responsibility for economic and employment activities.
- Avoiding stigmatisation. It is not always useful to target particular minority groups as this can lead to stigmatisation – targeting whole neighbourhoods which experience deprivation and have a high percentage of immigrant people can be more valuable.
- Being flexible in the notion of the term ‘local’. In order to identify employment opportunities for local unemployed people it is useful to think beyond the immediate local area. By linking people with local employment centres and growth poles, through building up the trust of employers and supporting mobility, the project has considerably reduced the isolation experienced by local unemployed people.
- A key strength of the Aulnay project was that it brought together agencies which had previously worked independently from a number of dispersed locations. Bringing together agencies and employers round an URBAN programme proved particularly effective in setting goals and a time limit for achieving them, and bringing together agencies around a common purpose.
Case study
URBAN I Aulnay-sous-Bois [pdf, en, 22kb]
