efms News

Current Research Projects

Culture Labs - Recipes for Social Innovation, European Commission H2020

Culture and cultural activities are an important part of life. Cultural activities are an opportunity to express yourself and to interact with others in mutual respect and joy. Stemming from another country in a foreign country poses here particular challenges. The EU recognises the importance of cultural activities for the involvement and participation of all social groups in society, and supports the work of cultural institutions to invite for participation in cultural activities.
CultureLabs is a European project funded under Horizon2020 (2018-2021). Working collaboratively across six countries, it aims to support Cultural Institutions, Non-Governmental Organisations, public administrations and other actors who wish to organise participatory projects for social inclusion via interaction on cultural heritage. The project asks about related needs and opinions among migrants and refugees.
As a part of the project, a platform will be developed, which will be used to enable institutional stakeholders as well as community participants to document and share ideas and approaches that can facilitate social innovation in culture by increasing participation of hitherto under-represented groups. Digital technology will be used to facilitate and promote collaboration between different actors and the provided services will be designed with keeping involved communities in mind.

Young Migrant Entrepreneur (YOU - ME), European Commission

The project develops and implements a training programme for migrants' entrepreneurship, offered to migrants who are interested in founding an own enterprise. In cooperation with Kompass in Frankfurt and other partners in Italy, Greece, Spain and Sweden, who are active in the training of migrants planning to found a start-up enterprise, online-tools for self-assessment, a concise online training programme for implementing the founding and maintainance of an enterprise, a in-house training programme accompanied by a mentoring programme involving experiences migrant entrepreneurs had been compiled and implemented. The joint programmes and training materials had been translated into the languages of the participating EU countries, as well as of relevant countries of origin. The efms contributed with concepts for and an evaluation of the project, implemented scientific support and contributed with its expertise on integration research and practical implementation of related measures for migrant entrepreneurs in European municipalities (CLIP Modul 4, Ethnic Entrepreneurship).

Victim Support Through Awareness Raising and neTworking (V-Start), European Commission

Hate crimes, whether physical or psychological, against persons, property or symbols, are increasingly appearing daily realities throughout the EU and sources of social alarm in affected communities. In many EU countries, policies meant to counter hate crimes focus more on apprehending the offender and less on protecting the victim, partly due to limited understanding of the specific character of such crimes and their consequences for vulnerable groups.
The V-START Project situates the protection of victims of racist and homophobic hate crimes within the broader framework of protection of crime victims as outlined in EU and national legislation.
The project will contribute to creating national networks of victim support services, which will strengthen the present capacity of CSOs (explanation) advocating for victims’ rights. Through the networks, victims will be encouraged to report incidents and are made aware of their rights and the opportunities offered by specific victim support services.

Study on analysis of stakeholders on migration and return as well as on related target groups in Serbia, Albania and Kosovo, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)

The project conducted empirical field research in Serbia, Albania and the Kosovo, realising a series of in-depth interveiws with actors and experts in situ belonging to governmental authorities, public institutions, CSO's and the DIMAK offices in Belgrade, Prishtina and Tirana on their experiences with counselling and support for returning migrants, in particular for finding employment and/or qualification measures for an employment in Germany. In addition, returning migrants from Germany to all three countries of origin have been interviewed regarding their experiences via an online questionnaire available in four languages (Serbian, Albanian, German, English). Based on the empirical results and concise document analysis, a report including recommendations had been compiled on the activities of the DIMAK offices for GIZ.

Evaluation of pilot projects on "Support for social counselling of foreigners in the context of so-called model regions", funded by the Bavarian Ministry for labour and Social Affairs, Family and Integration

In four Bavarian pilot districts an one municipality (rural districts of Lindau, Mühldorf a. Inn, Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm as well as Schwandorf and the city of Munich), since the beginning of 2016, social work for asylum seekers is realised on the level of rural district/municipality. The project evaluated with empirical methods, to which extent social counselling for asylum seekers organised and implemented by the local communities differs signoificantly from social counselling provided by welfare organisations, and wether regarding extent and quality of the measures, relevant differences between the various provides can be found.

AVIOR -Open Source Multilingual Teaching Materials Forum for Migrant Pupils in Europe, ERASMUS+-Programm

The goal of AVIOR is, to increase the involvement of parents with migration background into learning processes of their children in the school system, to forster the awareness about the education processes of their children, as well as to enable the parents' participation and involvement in supporting their childrens' mathematical and language capabilities.
AVIOR provides multilingual materials to parents in order to increase their capabilities for active involvement into the learning processes of their children. AVIOR assumes that these materials contribute to the self-assurance and langauge acquisition process of the children. A successful cooperation between the families' parents and the school results in a broad scope of positive effects.
During the first phase of the project, for this purpose a collection of materials had been compiled and created, and had been translated into several language (German, Englisch, Italian, Croatian, Estonian, Dutch, Turkish, Russian, Aarabic, Albanian).
For the use of these materials, in every of the project partners' countries, case studies for the implemention of the use of these materials by the parents as well as the teachers have been implemented. On the basis of an analysis of these case studies, a handbook for good practices and their implementation by teachers will be compiled.

Publications

V-Start: Support system for victims of hate crime in Germany, Research Report to the EU Comission, October 2018

Die Bevölkerung mit Migrationshintergrund in Bayern – Stand der Integration und integrationspolitische Maßnahmen, Research Report to the Bavarian State Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs, Family and Integration, August 2017

efms-paper 2017-1
Heckmann, Friedrich: Unbegleitete minderjährige Flüchtlinge. Lebensverläufe in Deutschland. Bericht an die Werner-Zeller-Stifung. efms paper 2017-01, Bamberg, January 2017

Susanne Bartig / Wolfgang Bosswick / Friedrich Heckmann: Vielfaltsmonitor. Studie zum Umgang mit ethnischer und religiöser Vielfalt in Deutschland, Bamberg 2017. Link to the interactive web page: Diversity Monitor.

Friedrich Heckmann: Multilevel Integration Policies. In: Rozanova, Marya S. (Hrsg.) Labour Migration and Migrant Integration Policies in Germany and Russia. St. Petersburg 2016, S. 87-94

Friedrich Heckmann: Integration von Migranten. Einwanderung und neue Nationenbildung. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2015. 309 pages. ISBN 978-3-658-06979-7.

Friedrich Heckmann/Delia Wiest: Research-Policy Dialogues in Germany. In: Peter Scholten, Han Entzinger, Rinus Penninx, Stijn Verbeek, Integrating Immigrants in Europe, Research-Policy Dialogues, Springer International Publishing 2015.