The WINS project focuses on how work inclusion may improve the social inclusion of migrants within comparative urban settings.
Some amount of socioeconomic inequality has for a long time been tolerated as necessary to motivate individuals to contribute to economic growth. However, social inequality and exclusion are now increasingly recognized in the policy world as factors that may prevent such growth. In recent years, social inclusion has become a key policy concern in EU strategy documents and funding calls, and an increasingly important focus for global NGOs.
In the Global North and South, policy discussions now overwhelmingly focus on improving socioeconomic inclusion through the development of human capital. Despite this changing rhetorical emphasis, social policy measures and social work practice still lag behind and operate primarily with the aim of improving the problematic motivations and relations of individuals. The alternative is to consider the individuals targeted for support as actors located within problematic structural, social and institutional contexts. The educational and research activities of the WINS project put this perspective into the forefront, emphasizing the labour market-, social- and institutional contexts within which work inclusion measures take place, with particular focus on measures implemented within the workplace.
We will apply an innovative theoretical framework refined in earlier research to teach, discuss and develop research on how working inclusion affects the dignity, wellbeing and socioeconomic status of individuals in the urban contexts of Oslo and Bangalore.
More about the project
Our work will strengthen and further develop the long-term research collaboration between Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet) and National Law School University of India, Bangalore (NLSIU), through the development of external national and international research projects applying cross-disciplinary expertise on work and social inclusion, urban development, social work, human rights and social policy in Norway and India.
We will also develop master's level courses that investigate the theme of work inclusion and social inclusion in comparative urban settings. The WINS team will develop two master’s level courses to be taught simultaneously at OsloMet and NLSIU – one, a MOOC (massive online open course) and the other, a guided research course hosted at “enterprise” field sites in Oslo and Bangalore. An outcome developed in cooperation with the WORKINC project and the MOOC course will offer a focus on the comparative contexts of Oslo, Bangalore and Moscow and it will be jointly offered to students at OsloMet, NLSIU and the Higher School of Economics, Moscow.
Participants
Partner institutions
- NAV Work and Welfare Directorate
- Norasondegruppen AS (Oslo)
- Cividep India (Bangalore)
