Mid Sweden University

The role and responsibilities of Swedish municipalities in promoting labor market inclusion for vulnerable groups have significantly expanded in recent decades. Despite this, research on municipal labor market policies remains limited.

This poster focuses on how we, in an interactive research project, create collaborative platforms for sharing empirical experiences between practitioners with researchers serving as facilitators. These platforms aim to co-create critical research questions and address needs-oriented issues regarding the Employment Indicator Project (BIP), a Danish labor market initiative that has gained considerable interest among local welfare actors in Sweden, including Municipal Labor Market Units (AME) and Coordination Associations (a structure for public interorganizational cooperation for labour-market reintegration). The aim of the research project is to generate knowledge about the motivations and conditions for AMEs to implement and maintain BIP within the Swedish welfare system.

BIP aims to assist individuals who are far from the labor market and is based on expectancy theory, which means that case workers need to develop trust in clients' work capabilities and make positive assessments of their job prospects, with a focus on individual responsibility. In Sweden, welfare policy has shifted towards activating citizens who were previously seen as passive recipients of financial support. AME activities have played a key role in supporting these groups.

The project involves broad participation of representatives from eight AMEs and five Coordination Associations. The interpretation and implementation of BIP vary across municipalities, making these collaborative platforms central for exchange of experiences around the approach to enable learning between practitioners.

The study design is built on a continuous cycle of preparation for workshops, enabling workshops, co- analyzing data and knowledge dissemination. Furthermore, a norm-critical perspective will be used to examine how norms affect society's perception of unemployment and social marginalization. Gender perspectives and intersectionality will be considered since BIP primarily affects women's work in a female-dominated sector. The results will be shared and disseminated through Coordination Associations, research networks, conferences but primarily the researcher and the practitioners will co-create a short film that includes both results and reflected dialogue questions to be used for implementation in the different municipalities (AME).

The researchers have extensive experience in researching the welfare system and diversity issues, as well as using a norm-critical approach. Collaboration between researchers and practitioners in AME and Coordination Associations supporting other types of interactive research design that has proven successful in previous projects related to labor market inclusion.This presentation directly addresses the conference’s sub-theme “Connecting social work research and practice, including the co-creation of knowledge,” by demonstrating how knowledge can be developed involving both researchers and practitioners.