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Valuing diversity: guidance for labour market integration of migrants

and order and rhythm to another culture’s perceptions can be a challenge and
the setting of the interventions has to be sufficiently flexible and context-
responsive to allow for innovative and less conventional approaches.

Practices should be immersed in, and responsive to, contexts
Guidance practices should not only account for the specific problems which
immigrant communities face, they should also work in proximity and cooperatively
with those communities and their contexts. This implies involving communities in
designing, implementing and evaluating the practice, as well as assigning diverse
roles to members of the community. We have seen examples of immigrant
associations harbouring guidance services and acting as recruiters/advertisers
for programmes. We have also already referred the crucial importance of
establishing successful role models and generating parental engagement.
Insertion in context can be enabled by other organisations such as schools (as
seen in the Kumulus project), labour unions or the firms which employ
immigrants. These organisations provide stable environments with set roles and
routines which can be used to create career learning, reflexion and planning.

Practices must be centred on the potential of immigrants
Integration models should reflect the idea that immigrants are individuals who
must gain access to certain sets of skills and knowledge to fulfil their potential in
an autonomous, empowered way. Models should not be based on the idea that
immigrants are flawed individuals who need compensatory or corrective
measures to adapt to the receiving society. The first approach has an assets
perspective of cultural diversity, while the latter adopts a deficits perspective.
For labour market integration of migrants, guidance activities must strive to
identify and promote career development, departing from the migrant’s relevant
experiences, knowledge, interests, culture and other types of potential. Although
guidance must identify barriers to labour market integration and individual career
development needs, its emphasis should be on bridging personal valuations and
perceptions with the host culture systems, culture and values, rather than
imposing relatively rigid ideas about career and professional success. An
approach based on potential encourages individual ownership of the career
development process, reducing feelings of alienation, with direct effects on
productivity and academic success. In macro terms this gives guidance the role
of a tool that enhances the active contribution of immigrants to the economy and
their participation in civil society.
The adoption of this type of approach affects all aspects of policy
implementation, from the targets and methodologies used, to the linguistic terms
used to identify the target groups. A deficit model might tend to generate

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