Employability has become a common place for training and career literature in the past decade, and it has also been widely used by current European policies and even abused under the recent circumstances of fiscal crisis since mid 2008. In the paper we present here, wi will produce an analysis of the pedagogical relation from thetheoretical background of Basil Bernstein combining it with Max Van Manen proposal. The context of our research is the WISE (Work INtegration Social Enterprise), a particular kind of Enterprise with a double purpose. From one side, they are ment to produce, as any other Enterprise, but on the other hand they are ment to integrate, as workers, different persons from vulnerable collectives (integration workers). In this kind of (Social) Enterprise, we can find different kinds of educational workers, besides the integration workers. So, the statement of this paper is that the pedagogical relation that is built between the companion worker and the integration worker in this context, is a privilegied place to see how pedagogical relations can be used to fostering employability among those more vulnerable in our societies in a relative short time. We try to seek on how the educational knowledge is produced and transformed at risk situations, and we understand that this is intimately linked with a particular approach on what and how to conduce a research, due to its influence on those who teach and learn. Combination of Basil Bersntein Model and Max Van Manen proposal allows us to centre the research on what is to be transmitted as educational knowledge, and put into consideration that what it is transmitted is constituted by three rules, invariable in time and in space. We just say, by now, that our research is centred not only in what it is transmitted inside the enterprise, but it allow us to systematize agents’ performances, their own discourses at their own educational agencies at the different levels or arenas where the main purpose is the educational knowledge.

We are currently conducting interviews with managers, workers and people undergoing their own individual transition plans in several Work Integration Social Enterprises in both Spain and Germany. We will use two different analytical frameworks to analyze the interviews and we will then try to establish a discussion between both approaches: those based upon Basil Bernstein’s theory of the pedagogic discourse and the phenomenological approach inspired in Max Van Manen approach to pedagogical toughtfulness.

We expect to provide a description and an analysis of pedagogical practice and pedagogical relation in Work Integration Social Enterprises allowing us to consider the different roles played by both the workers and the institutions in their autonomy to decide upon the practice they conduct. The data will be then contrasted with current legislation and policies which frame WISEs.