The International Conference for Sharing Best Practices has been held on 10th and 11th of March 2022. It was organised in the framework of the Interreg-Adrion REInSER project and it brought together scholars and practitioners from the whole Europe and beyond to share inspiring initiatives of refugees integration through social entrepreneurship and to enrich the debate on some of the most relevant issues surrounding this topic, including the potential transferability of the initiatives in other contexts, the participation of the beneficiaries in decision-making processes and the legislative challenges faced by SE.
The role of social entrepreneurship (SE) for refugees and asylum seekers’ integration in hosting societies is attracting increasing attention from researchers, practitioners and policymakers. SE includes all the entrepreneurial activities aiming to reach a social objective, regardless of their organizational form and referring both to for-profit and non-profit organizations.
Within the broad field of Social Economy, social enterprises are an example of “economy that works for people”, delivering services and working for social and economic integration of disadvantaged groups. As a form of inclusive business, they revealed crucial in addressing the emergence of the refugee crisis and providing help for the most common barriers (language, temporary housing, health and psychological assistance).
In the past decade, many EU countries adopted new legislation or delivered specific policies to support their development. However, definitional and practical obstacles are still present, and are reflected in the challenges for public institutions to design and implement policies that can foster the development of more social enterprises, and to assess the relative impact of such policies as well as their transferability potential. These matters are particularly relevant in the light of the political debates that characterize migration and integration dynamics of asylum seekers, refugees and migrations in Europe, and therefore more discussions on these themes is important.
