Asylum: Intercultural Awareness of Labour Market Service Providers

The refugee migration of the past years has presented the labour market service providers with great challenges. In order to better prepare employees in the job centres to work with refugees, Network IQ has developed the "Basic Intercultural Awareness with Emphasis on Asylum and Forced Migration" training concept.

Since the end of 2015, Network IQ has been conducting training on location in cooperation with the relevant parties of the "Integration of Asylum Seekers and Refugees (IvAF)" programme of the ESF Integration Guideline. Demand for training is high: While a total of 193 training sessions with 3,009 participants were implemented throughout Germany in 2015, 548 training sessions with 7868 participants took place in the first half of 2016. In the first quarter of 2017, a total of 22 training sessions with 279 participants were implemented. In all, more than 11,150 employees have already been educated in job centres, including a considerable number of employees who participated in intercultural competence development for the first time.

The training is not solely focused on factual knowledge that is of great use in counselling practice and placement. According to Tina Lachmayr, Head of the IQ Competence Centre for Intercultural Opening and Anti-Discrimination, it is more important to expand the intercultural competence of the counselling and mediation specialists "so that they can interact with refugees successfully, appropriately, and with mutual satisfaction."

Empathy is also a key to sustainable labour market integration of immigrants. This includes the understanding of counsellors for the personal situation of each individual, which requires knowledge of their origin and culture. It is also important to raise awareness in order to reflect on one's own actions and their effects on others. The training courses also touch on basic information on worldwide forced migration routes and the causes of displacement as well as the sequence of an asylum procedure in Germany.

The Federal Employment Agency (BA) was awarded the ‘German Educational Prize 2016’ for its commitment to the comprehensive qualification of employees in the field of asylum and forced migration.

The Network IQ aims at improvements in the labour market integration of migrants. The implementation of training courses on increasing intercultural competences of the labour market activists is therefore a central focus of the programme.

Further information on the training manual "Basic Intercultural Awareness with Emphasis on Asylum and Forced Migration" as well as other publications on intercultural competence development can be found here (in German).