Understanding social innovation in refugee integration: actors, practices, politics in Europe

The so-called‘refugee crisis’marked a crucial juncture in migration governance acrossEurope. Policy-makers and local communities face the challenge of receiving andintegrating migrants (often in extremely vulnerable conditions) in a context of poorgovernance arrangements and rising skepticism, or even hostility. In the light ofsuch a complex scenario, this special issue explores social innovation as apromising approach to refugee integration. Socially innovative practices are indeedbased on the active engagement of policy-makers and assorted stakeholders—including target groups through co-creation. In the realm of asylum policies, socialinnovation can thus facilitate the meeting of refugees’needs as well as thebenevolence of receiving communities, ultimately strengthening social cohesion inregions of settlement. Families hosting migrants at home, community-basedcooperatives, and self-managed social spaces are all instances of socially innovativepractices that are often initiated by non-state actors but that might be upscaled andtransformed into fullyfledged public policies—especially by policy-makers at thelocal and regional levels. The special issue will focus on labor, housing, and socialintegration of refugees (especially in the stages after theirfirst reception) in thecontext of Central European cities and regions. The purpose is to developconceptual tools for evaluating and designing socially innovative practices thatmight ultimately improve the social innovation capacity of local and regionalgovernments. As the‘social innovation’concept risks to be ambiguous, the specialissue will also allow researchers to develop a set of empirically grounded indicatorsfor measuring social innovation capacity—especially based on the analysis of bestpractices that can be upscaled and replicated through mutual learning.