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Municipality Of Farum, Denmark Project Description

Strategy for Employment and Integration of Young Second Generation Immigrants

Overall Strategy
The strategy is through clearly defined political goals to formulate and establish the political as well as the administrative framework for a coherent policy in the policy area mentioned above in the headline. Next to bring together the resources with regard to the implementation of such a policy covering several fields of activities and at the same time involving authorities outside the municipality. Coordination of department efforts is of course an important necessity in this respect but does not itself meet all the demands in reaching a successful policy implementation. Among other issues a partnership between the local government and the private enterprises is also an important necessity.

Problem Situation
During the last years you have been witnessing groups of young second generation immigrants having severe difficulties with getting a job or to stay on in a educational/training activity. Often they drop out. This is happening even if you are in a full employment situation as is now the situation in Denmark and therefore also in the city of Farum where the lack of personnel and its consequences is on the agenda for the political debate right now.

As we are focusing on second generation immigrants we are dealing with youngsters who have been living in the Denmark for several years together with their parents. They have of course also been attending at least the Danish primary school system for several years.

Nevertheless you will find that many of the boys and girls are not able to speak or write the Danish language in a way which is acceptable for an employer.

Consequently you will find many of these youngsters in bars, shopping centers etc. just doing nothing. And the rate of criminal activities is fairly high.

In other words you have to attack this problem through a policy which is goal-oriented especially towards the group of second generation youngsters.

Framework Conditions
About 10 percent of the total population of 19,000 in Farum are foreigners. Most of this population group comes from Turkey, but more than 70 different languages are spoken in the city. One should have in mind that Farum is a suburb to the City of Copenhagen and thus part of the Metropolitan area in Denmark.

The target group of this project is especially the youngsters below 20 years. The project is about policy implementation, cfr. below.

The Project
As the goal of the overall policy is to reach a situation where each of the second generation immigrants is either in a job or in training/education, the necessary means/resources, support, follow-up activities etc., needed to reach this goal is exactly what we are looking for. Next we want to define the political and administrative structure most capable to implement a policy like this one.

The clearly defined political goal makes it necessary not only to get the money and other resources needed for a healthy policy implementation, but also to point out and to overcome barriers in administrative structures inside the municipal departments, between the municipality and other authorities and barriers originating from different kinds of legislation.

The political level in the Municipality of Farum have decided upon a political goal to be reached in a specific policy area. What kind of barriers have to be overruled in order to reach such a policy goal? What can be done inside the City and where are the co-partners needed? Private sector initiatives? Which are the instruments necessary? How do you contact the youngsters? What kind of follow-up initiatives are needed?

In order to get a platform of such an integration policy the newly elected Council of Farum decided to set up a special committee dealing with integration matters solely. The idea is to have this committee as a kind of umbrella with regard to all integration policy issues.

Strategic Management
The learning points has of course to do with strategic management as such.

Thereto the learning points could be of interest for several other local government inside and outside the network dealing with the same kind of problems, integration and labor market policy is an important issue in each of the countries and cities represented in the group.

Besides the strategic management needed, the learning points of this project could be the magnitude of resources necessary, finding of barriers inside and outside the official carrier of the policy and hindrances lying in the legislation.

To the learning points must be added the relationships between the political and the administrative level when it comes to implementation of a policy clearly defined at the political level with regard to what has to be achieved.