Internship as a Mean for Integration. A Critical Study

Abstract

Creating internships for newly arrived refugees and immigrants is a well-established part of the Swedish national integration program and is seen as a strategy to speed up immigrants' establishment process. One common belief is that the workplace is expected to give the newly arrived trainee necessary language training, as well as contextual and cultural knowledge. Here, the transferring direction of knowledge is from the Swedish workplace to the receiving newly arrived trainee. However, it is rarely discussed whether the trainee will bring valuable knowledge to the organization, or what the relational aspects of the internship should look like. In this paper, we develop the analysis of internships as a mean for integration in Sweden, by analyzing what trainees and their supervisors experience in terms of knowledge transfer and development. By interviewing trainees (4) and supervisors (5), the aim of this paper is to discuss ideas and practices in an internship program for refugees that The University of Gothenburg started in 2015. The interviews focus on the structural and organizational level, though individual experiences also play a central role. Theoretically, the analysis is interdisciplinary and a cross-cut between organizational theory and cultural studies, especially the work of Sara Ahmed. Our results show that the trainee is seen both as a resource and as someone who represents multiculturalism, hospitality, and the altruism of the university and its employees. The trainee is expected not only to integrate in a productive way, but also to stand out in non-productive areas, such as the social context.

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“…The social exclusion is a multidimensional problem relating to employment, education and housing, and is especially prominent among immigrants. Sweden's problems with unemployment and social exclusion were further aggravated by the 2015 refugee crisis, which urgently thrust unemployment and social exclusion problems to the top of the political agenda (Edling, 2015;Alaraj et al, 2019).…”

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“…The permissive environment of the enterprise also provided opportunities for the managers and participants to discuss each other’s cultures. The transfer of knowledge was, in comparison to what has been acknowledged in previous studies on labour market integration efforts in Sweden (Alaraj et al , 2018), two-way, in the sense that it went in both directions between participants, tutors, enterprise managers and customers. Knowledge of Eritrean food cultures was acknowledged and valued in the same way as the food cultures of Congo and Sweden.…”

“…Furthermore, Alaraj et al (2018) problematise knowledge transfer within internships that are part of the establishment programme. They state, for example, that knowledge is often perceived as going from the organisation to the intern, while the knowledge brought to the organisation by the intern remains largely unacknowledged.…”

“…Thus, the internship was spurred by aspects related to morals, goodwill and charity, as opposed to a genuine interest in the professional expertise of interns. It was, in other words, only formulated as an opportunity for interns to learn the Swedish language and come into contact with the labour market, as opposed to it also being framed as “an opportunity to develop organisational knowledge” (Alaraj et al , 2018, p. 339). This approach contrasts with WISEs focus on the inclusion of interns in product and service development (Defourny and Nyssens, 2006; Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, 2010), and the belief that the knowledge that interns contribute with is important for organisational development.…”

“…The combination of internships and language training during practical work has proved not only successful for WISEs (Merker Siesjö, 2014; Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, 2018) but also in other organisational settings. For instance, the analysis of an internship at a Swedish university highlights how both interns and the employer see language training in a work context as highly rewarding (Alaraj et al , 2018). The advantages of practising Swedish in a work-related context have led to a work placement strategy, which enables people to receive SFI credits from their internships.…”