Integration through vocational training. Promoting refugees’ access to apprenticeships in a collective skill formation system

Abstract

With this paper we want to contribute to the debate on the usage of vocational training as a tool to promote the integration of disadvantaged groups. We focus in particular on programmes that target refugees and highlight the organisational and coordination challenges that must be addressed in order to develop such programmes. Relying on knowledge developed by scholars of collective skill formation and by those who have studied policy coordination, we develop a number of hypotheses that can account for the successful implementation of this type of programmes. We then test our hypotheses against an example taken from Switzerland, consisting of a one-year pre-apprenticeship dual training programme adopted in 2018. We argue that its win-win quality, the flexibility with which it was managed and possibly also the political salience of the issue of refugee integration at the time, were the key factors explaining its successful adoption.