Introduction

The issue of migration has been a contentious issue policy and public terrain in the UK for decades (Geddens and Scholten Reference Geddes and Scholten2016). In the contemporary setting, it has been mobilised as a rhetorical rallying point for those seeking to garner popular support for the leave campaign during the Brexit referendum. Much of the anti-EU rhetoric was channelled through an anti-migrant discourse which oscillated between portrayals of foreigners as exploiting the country’s welfare system on the one hand and stealing jobs on the other hand (Dennison and Geddes Reference Dennison and Geddes2018). However, the political turbulence that has been strategically generated in the name of migration has not prevented newcomers from building their lives in the country, nor has it managed to sweep away the UK’s history as a society that has migration woven into its fabric (Modood Reference Modood and Meer2012; Rattansi Reference Rattansi2011). Hence, in the interstices of such a contentious debate there has been space for the political elite to recalibrate the narrative of migration to better fit the history of the country and the demands of the labour market. Such a refocusing of the political narrative of migration (through a decade of conservative government) has borrowed from a mainstream policy discourse of ‘deservingness’ and therefore has developed alongside an assumption that migrants must prove their ‘worth’ to their host country (Sales Reference Sales2002). Much of this deservingness is framed around their capacity to contribute to economic growth, and thus being economically self-reliant.

However, there are various challenges newcomers must overcome to be able to access the labour market and become self-reliant: they must learn or even master the language in a sufficient manner, they must possess the legal status that allows them to work, a complex task which requires navigating the bureaucracy of the UK Home Office, and ultimately they must find someone who provides an opportunity for employment, an employer who is persuaded about their suitability for that specific job (Anderson Reference Anderson2010; Martín et al. Reference Martín, Arcarons, Aumüller, Bevelander, Emilsson, Kalantaryan and Zorlu2016; Mulvey Reference Mulvey2018). To successfully progress through such steps newcomers rely either upon the support of relatives and acquaintances, as many ‘native’ citizens would do, but they can also rely on a set of organisations and businesses that provide support to migrants at their different stages of progress and across a spectrum of needs. In fact, as in other social policy domains, the UK has in the field of labour and migration created a market area where a range of organisations operate to provide services on behalf of the state and its devolved, regional and local units of government. Similarly, as has been the case for other social policy areas, those bodies operating in this field found themselves navigating a context where despite being delegated much responsibility and expectation via policy paradigms such as the Big Society (Kisby Reference Kisby2010), they have been confronted by funding cuts following the post-2008 austerity policies which have strongly impacted their capacities (Kendall et al. Reference Kendall, Mohan, Brookes and Yoon2018).

Among these organisations are those emanating from the so-called third sector referring to those organisational bodies that emerge in the spaces between the state and society, and that are often motivated by an altruistic esprit of helping others (while generating economic profits or not) (Salamon et al. Reference Salamon, Sokolowski and List2003).

It is through the prism of civil society mobilisation in the field of labour that we focus in this article on the role that the third sector is called to play in the post-Big Society, post-austerity UK context, while appreciating the features of migration in the country. Despite the increasing importance of third sector organisations (TSOs) in delivering services, little existing research has focused on the role of these organisations in relation to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Even fewer scholars have explored in detail how third sector organisations contribute to the employability of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Our aim in this paper is to answer the research question: what is the importance of third sector organisations in favouring (or not) the employability of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the UK?

This article proceeds as follows. Firstly, we offer a brief account of the role of third sector organisations in the policy evolution of the UK, focusing on policies developed in relation to third sector organisations. Second, an overview of previous academic studies that explore the contribution of third sector organisations in the employability of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers is provided. Third, in the methodology section a description of the methods used for our study is elaborated. Fourth, in the findings section we analyse the role of TSOs in the integration of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers into the labour market. We then explore the relationship between TSOs and the public sector. In the final section we discuss 3 key considerations that must be drawn from our findings in terms of how TSOs contribute towards the labour market integration of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers and how this contribution interacts with the social, economic and political environment in the UK.

Third Sector Organisations in the UK

Third sector organisations, understood as formal or informal groups which have some structure and regularity in their operations (Salamon et al. Reference Salamon, Sokolowski and List2003), have performed a key role in the implementation of UK policy since the end of the 1970s. In 1979 the election of a Conservative UK Government led by Margaret Thatcher advanced “New Right” policies which established the subsidiary principle as a cornerstone of its idea of public policy-making, opening the way for the private sector to become the most relevant provider of what used to be ‘public services’ (Gamble Reference Gamble1994).

Similar policy trajectories were continued by the New Labour Government elected in 1997 and subsequently also by the Conservative-led Coalition Government which came to power in 2010 (Grand Reference Grand1991; Haugh and Kitson Reference Haugh and Kitson2007; Alcock Reference Alcock, Rees and Mullins2016). During the New Labour Government, the state was conceptualised as an ‘enabler’ in promoting civic activism and engaging with civil society organisations to address societal needs (Carmel and Harlock Reference Carmel and Harlock2008; Haugh and Kitson Reference Haugh and Kitson2007), while at the same time, civil society organisations were promoted to foster community development and renewal (Johnson Reference Johnson1999). Third sector organisations were considered by many policy-makers to be better embedded in the community and thus better able to understand specific societal needs than many state actors (Haugh and Kitson Reference Haugh and Kitson2007; Nicholls and Teasdale Reference Nicholls and Teasdale2017). In the 2010 UK General Election, one central plank of the Conservative Party manifesto was that of the “Big Society” (Kisby Reference Kisby2010). A greater level of voluntarism, including paving the way for charities, private enterprises and social enterprises to be much more involved in the running of public services was subsequently encouraged, at least rhetorically, by the Coalition Government (Montgomery and Baglioni Reference Montgomery, Baglioni, Federico and Lahusen2018).

The brief analysis of the historical role of TSOs in the UK offered here has traced a common commitment across different governments to expand the functions of these organisations and to support them in providing public services, treating them as a substitute to, or as a replacement for, existing (public) providers in a competitive market (Calò et al. Reference Calò, Teasdale, Donaldson, Roy and Baglioni2018; Sepulveda Reference Sepulveda2015). This can also be identified in the provision of employability services. For example, literature in the field of employability and the third sector has focused upon the impact of marketisation on third sector providers (Zimmermann et al. Reference Zimmermann, Aurich, Graziano and Fuertes2014), elaborating how commissioning processes have led to a contraction of (smaller) TSOs and an expansion of larger private sector bodies (Egdell et al. Reference Egdell, Dutton and Mcquaid2016). These organisations have also been required to tailor their services and activities to meet the needs of public funders and this has generated challenges to provide added value such as service innovation and community engagement (Lindsay et al. Reference Lindsay, Osborne and Bond2014). The implementation of austerity policies in the UK following the 2008 crisis and the subsequent cuts to social policy programmes which have been well evidenced in extant studies (Lowndes and Pratchett Reference Lowndes and Pratchett2012; Milbourne and Cushman Reference Milbourne and Cushman2015; Montgomery and Baglioni Reference Montgomery, Baglioni, Federico and Lahusen2018) have been particularly acute in those local levels of government that TSOs often engage in partnership (Lowndes and McCaughie Reference Lowndes and McCaughie2013). Are the dynamics above described true also in a politically contested field such as migration and in particular for those TSOs which operate in the specific area of labour market integration?

TSOs, Migrants, Refugees and Labour Market Integration

The third sector which deals with migrants and refugees within the UK has been under-researched and under-theorised within academia in recent years (Mayblin and James Reference Mayblin and James2019).

On the more general topic of migration and civil society, recent literature has focused on the conceptualisation of which organisations might be included under the heading of Black and Asian Minorities Ethnic organisations (BAME), on discussing the presence of a distinctive sector (McCabe and Phillimore Reference McCabe and Phillimore2017) and exploring the reason behind the lack of development of these TSOs (Craig Reference Craig2011; McCabe and Phillimore Reference McCabe and Phillimore2017, Ware Reference Ware2017). Third sector organisations which work with refugees have been defined as often small, local, volunteer run organisation which often fill gaps of public services (Phillimore and McCabe Reference Phillimore and Goodson2010). This is particularly true for asylum seekers and particularly refused one which can only access to third sector organisations to fill some of their needs (Mayblin and James Reference Mayblin and James2019).

Literature has also discussed what was considered the poor levels of government support offered to refugee community organisations (Phillimore and Goodson Reference Phillimore and Goodson2010) and the impact of austerity on the BAME sector (Tilki et al. Reference Tilki, Thompson, Robinson, Bruce, Chan, Lewis, Chinegwundoh and Nelson2015; Ware Reference Ware2017). For example, researchers have explored that funding opportunities for non-profit organisations dealing with BAME communities and in particular asylum seekers and refugees have been reduced across time (Mayblin and James Reference Mayblin and James2019) and few community organisations operating for these beneficiaries have been in a position to bid for contracts due to their low annual turnover (Ware Reference Ware2017). Scholars have also pointed to accommodation contracts previously awarded to local authorities and third sector organisations transferred to private security companies (e.g. COMPASS). Only one third sector organisation (Migrant Help) has been contracted by the central government to provide advice to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. At the same time cuts to the budgets of the Refugee Council and Refugee Action led to a decline in essential employment and integration services (Terry Reference Terry2017). Only in few contexts, such as the Scottish one, an orientation towards co-management and co-governance of services involving third sector organisation was identified (Strokosch and Osborne Reference Strokosch and Osborne2016). However, Strokosch and Osborne (Reference Strokosch and Osborne2016) also discussed that other factors such as government policy and geography were among the fundamental variables to facilitate both integration and inter-organisational relationships. Hence, existing studies have revealed that across the years, policies have on balance shifted resources more towards the private sector oriented end of the spectrum than towards those grass-roots, civil society organisations (Lowndes and Pratchett Reference Lowndes and Pratchett2012; Milbourne and Cushman Reference Milbourne and Cushman2015; Montgomery and Baglioni Reference Montgomery, Baglioni, Federico and Lahusen2018). Hence, the logic of privatisation and marketisation of what used to be public social services has progressed since the Thatcher era into the contemporary service delivery aimed at migrants and refugees.

While, a substantial amount of studies have researched the basic services for migrants provided by TSOs, particularly in the first days and months of arrival in the receiving country (Garkisch et al. Reference Garkisch, Heidingsfelder and Beckmann2017), few have explored the relationship between TSOs, migrants/refugees/asylum seekers and the labour market and even less attention has been paid to these relationships in the UK context. According to a recent systematic review, research has focused on job training, the direct hiring of migrants, subsidised programmes and support with work permits and work contracts (Garkisch et al. Reference Garkisch, Heidingsfelder and Beckmann2017). However, few of these studies were conducted in the UK context. For example, Shutes (Reference Shutes2011) highlighted how the welfare-to-work policy might conflict with an ethos to assist those refugees who are among the hardest to reach or to encourage better access to a range of matched skilled jobs. Some research has also been conducted on those campaigns to address issues of solidarity, provide legal services and promote voluntary work (Sales Reference Sales2002). Meer et al. (Reference Meer, Peace and Hill2019) highlighted that third sector organisations in Scotland have sought to engage private sector employers through successful brokering programmes. However, scarce funding has limited the success and the capacity of these initiatives. Recently, De Jong (Reference DeJong2019) discussed that TSOs provides employability opportunities for highly educated refugees thanks to the access through volunteering and the recognition of “refugeeness” as a form of capital. The risk of involving them in “hidden, devalued and unremunerated emotional labour” (De Jong Reference DeJong2019, p. 335) was also highlighted.

No existing research has focused exclusively on third sector organisations employability services for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Employability in our study includes all those activities which are directly related to employment, such as for example employment programmes, education and language training, skills development and policy advocacy for labour market integration.

Therefore, there is a gap for robust analysis to identify and understand how TSO organisations favour or not the employment of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers; findings from these analyses, which offer different perspectives, may well have important implications for policy development and best practice as we discuss in our conclusions.

Findings

In our findings, we are going first to provide an overview of the TTSOs dealing with integration in the labour market. Second, we are going to focus on the role that TSOs have in favouring (or not) employability of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. We conclude than with an analysis of the effect of austerity on TSOs.

Overview of TSOs Dealing with Integration of Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the Labour Market

A total of 285 organisations (out of 2,814,658 organisations registered in the databases) that focus on the labour market integration of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers have been identified. Figure 1 presents a breakdown of the number of new organisations across each decade since the beginning of the century. It reveals that 85% of the organisations which today are still active were created from the 1990s onwards, and 71% of the total number of organisations were founded between 2000 and 2019. This could be due to the increasing role, analysed earlier, that third sector organisations acquired in terms of service provision during the last three decades and by a policy paradigm that shifted the responsibility of increasing employability from employers and the government sector to the jobseekers and civil society sector (Montgomery et al. Reference Montgomery, Mazzei, Baglioni and Sinclair2017, Jessop Reference Jessop, Burrows and Loader1994, Reference Jessop2003). The increasing number of new TSOs focusing upon labour market integration in the UK does appear to indicate that there is a growing demand for services which focus on this specific aspect of integration. However, 98 organisations were founded between 2000 and 2009 while 105 were established between 2010 and 2019. Therefore, the so-called refugee crisis of 2014–15 does not seem to have affected the establishment of new organisations focusing on labour market integration, while it most probably affected the number of organisations focusing upon a wider range of services and needs.

Fig. 1

Number of Charities dealing with the employability of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers by Year of Foundation

The Charity Commission and regulator data alongside our analysis of the TSOs websites reveal that the activities undertaken in relation to the labour market integration of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the UK can be structured across five different typologies:

1. 1. Employment activities: this category includes not only services which provide a match or a bridge between companies and beneficiaries but also migrant-led organisations which employ migrants and refugees in their workforce and TSOs which support migrants and refugees to start-up businesses.

2. 2. Integration support activities: this category mainly includes organisations which provide a holistic integration service in which employment is aligned with advice-based programmes concerning housing, welfare benefits or health.

3. 3. Education and training activities: this category includes mainly those organisations which organise English language courses.

4. 4. Skills development activities: this category includes mainly those organisations which provide courses for developing skills related to specific jobs.

5. 5. Policy advocacy activities: this category includes mainly organisations which advocate for the equality of migrants in the workplace or promote campaigns related to the rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers employed in the UK.

As presented in Table 3, the majority of organisations in our dataset are providing integration support services (38%) and training and education services (30%). Examining our findings more closely we can observe that 14% of TSOs promote policy advocacy related to employability while only 13% provide employability services and 4% invests in skills development activities. From this perspective, it is clear that the main activities that TSOs undertake are related to language provision on the one hand and a holistic approach to integration on the other hand. Employment services and skills development activities seem to be only residual in terms of the range of activities that TSOs provide and they are often aligned with other types of services.

Table 3

TSOs’ Area of activities (Percentages)

Area of Activities	Percentages
Integration support	38%
Training and education	30%
Policy advocacy	14%
Employment	13%
Skills development	4%
Other	1%
Total N	388

We can conclude that a limited number of organisations provide formal employability services or skills development services, while most focus upon education and training activities such as the provision of English language courses. Perhaps this reflects the marketisation and privatisation trend that we have presented earlier and echoes the findings of the Big Society audit (Kendall et al. Reference Kendall, Mohan, Brookes and Yoon2018) showing that further opportunities have been provided and seized by larger private companies or social operators than charities and civil society-grassroots organisations. Nevertheless, this finding also reflects the fewer financial resources available to promote employability activities and the austerity measures which have particularly affected these TSOs, reducing the availability of services for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Another possible explanation is that employability services are not regarded by TSOs as the most important activities to provide for the effective integration of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in society. They could instead be considered a secondary activity which can be provided by other organisations such as recruitment agencies and/or public sector agencies, once a first level of integration activities has been delivered.

A Marginal but Fundamental Role in the Integration of Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Labour Market

The marginal role in providing services for employability identified through our categorisation was in some part confirmed by our qualitative analysis. However, we noticed that TSOs provided a somewhat different mechanism of labour market integration according to the different type of migrant and migration rationale.

The Effect of Austerity on the Response Capacities of Third Sector Organisations

Our findings confirm that the reduction of public funding has necessarily impacted the number of organisations which provide public sector type provision. As suggested by one interviewee, “there were other agencies we used to refer to, they have been downsized very much; they don’t have much resources. They do some schemes for refugees for doctors, they run a few activities, but it is nothing compared to what was run before. Some organisations have closed. There is less infrastructure to help people from our country find jobs” (13_TSO). These concerns were echoed by another of our participants, “Home Office funding for refugee integration employment services was withdrawn” and the “entire refugee sector was shut down” (4_TSO_UK). This affected not only community organisations which had to continue, in the best case scenario, to provide more services with the same amount of resources but also more established TSOs which had to completely restructure their integration services, reducing for example employment schemes and services. Accessibility to public funding was also identified as particularly difficult due to the specificity of contracting mechanisms. The founder of one of the TSOs participating in our study described the challenge of his organisation “to even get a public contract because of the systems in place” (5_TSO_UK) which seemed to favour larger and more established organisations that have more structured procedures and present a lower level of risk for government commissioners.

The TSOs resourced by the Home Office mainly provide information and advice for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, while in recent years few employability schemes and pilot programmes have been resourced by the UK Government. Providing services for the UK Government does not come without tension, particularly if, for example, the lack of participation by MRAs in some of the workshops or services provided by TSOs can result in the sanctioning of beneficiaries and reducing their benefits and rights. Thus, as suggested by one organisation we spoke to, TSOs should be “aware of the risks of working with the UK Government and to be very clear about the conditions connected to the programmes” (7_TSO_UK).

Less tension was instead identified in the provision of services for the Scottish Government or the local authority resettlement schemes, which have a remit of integration but have no responsibility for border control. For example, as stated by one interviewee in Scotland, the decision they took to include in their programme—which previously only focused on refugees and asylum seekers, migrants—third country nationals and EU nationals, was a consequence of a request by the Scottish Government to expand the pool of beneficiaries. However, at the moment due to the political instability that is characterising the UK context and the approaching end of the resettlement programme,Footnote ² it is difficult for TSOs to understand if in the future “they will focus so much on integration or they will need to do a lot more on the policy and advocacy side” (2_TSO) because of the potential consequences of policy change at the UK Government level.

Almost all of the organisations we interviewed advocated for improvement of policy through different instruments. Some of them explained that they often participate in consultations at the UK Government level such as one related to the future of the resettlement programme after 2020 or they work in collaboration with specific All Party Groups or commissions to improve Home Office procedures and future policies. One interviewee pinpointed that the type of advocacy they do can best be described as “collaborative influencing”. They perceived themselves to be collaborative, aiming at improving the system without however taking any political stance, which could negatively impact their existing relationships with other stakeholders. However, some organisations declared that although they are involved in different consultation events with a collaborative lens, they recognise that their contribution is not taken into consideration: “So within that discussion, you contribute and participate and all that, and you realise that your contribution is not valid. So yes, they give you the power to make the decision and to be engaged… but the recognition is not there, and it goes back to that point of just ticking the box” (5_TSO). Other organisations instead took a more political stance, aimed at stimulating change in the system through campaigning (e.g. the ‘Lift the Ban’ campaign to allow asylum seekers access to work or the ‘Stand as one’ campaign to support the integration of refugees) or through the organisation of events (e.g. Day of Action). More established organisations tried to use their profile to access politicians and policy makers and give a voice to people that usually struggle to be included in policy dialogues. One TSO, for example, organised what they called “candidate cafes” which involved organising events across different communities, inviting all candidates for the local election alongside community groups to discuss future policies together.