Achieving Social Inclusion by Empowerment Professionalization of Female Refugees

• In Event: Educational Organizations: Toward Equality and Inclusion Organizing Equality and Social Justice Through Inclusion

Abstract

Due to the civil war in Syria and increasing political issues of terrorism in the Middle East, the number of asylum seekers and refugees in the European countries rose (BAMF 2016). According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), approximately two million people have applied as asylum seekers in Europe in the year 2015 (UNHCR 2015). Refugees’ inclusion and social justice recently have become an important issue in Germany and the whole European Union. How can refugees and immigrants themselves contribute to support each other and support social inclusion as well? Contrasting the social exclusion and isolation which is produced by media and politics (UN High Commissioner for Refugees 2016), and is also visible in the organization too.
Empowerment professionalization contributes to the self-help and professionalization of female refugees. Especially train the trainer approaches and peer learning hold great potential for empowerment professionalization (Thorning et al 2013) as well as social inclusion. It can be conceptualized based on professional discourses of inclusion. By this, the self-help and train-the-trainer (TTT) approach contributes to a refugee’s empowerment professionalization approach. In a TTT approach, female refugees are trained in participatory, resource-oriented approaches like Life-Work-Planning (Bolles, 1981; 2001). At the same time, it helps to empower oneself and others and, as multipliers, to help others find their own skills, interests, strengths, life, and career paths. TTT approaches provide the potential for self-organized empowerment professionalization. Based on an approach of critical performativity within empowerment professionalization (Spicer; Alvesson and Kärreman 2009), the contribution reflects on refugees’ professionalization not only being a potential for developing their capabilities but on the potential of bringing about social inclusion and spaces of ‘belonging’ in and to society (Weber 2014).

Author

• Sepideh Abedi Farizan, Philipps-Universität Marburg