Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs hereafter) are a resource aimed at the social and labour insertion of people at-risk or in situation of exclusion. They have as one of their main aims the employability of people in situations of vulnerability or exclusion, which are hired as Integration Workers (IW hereafter). In this regard, WISEs intend to make employment accessible to people who have not had opportunities to participate in productive processes establishing links with the ordinary labour market and therefore showing that learning at work and employment itself may be inclusive. In Spain, in 2015, around 3117 people were hired as IW on the data offered by 188 WISEs of the Social Report of 2015 of Work Integration Social Enterprises (FAEDEI, 2015). They had an insertion percentage of 52.34% both in the ordinary labour market and in the WISE itself.
Instead of focusing on improving individual and personal aspects to foster employability, we strongly believe that employment policies should focus on the contextual conditions that produce unemployment and consequently, exclusion. In this regard, we consider a multidimensional conception of employability in which personal and contextual interact, so that we guide our analysis towards the configuration of the social processes that occur in the WISEs.
The concept of employability takes centre of stage in the 1980s from its origins in the beginning of the 20th century (Suárez, 2016). For many years, it has been approached from a perspective that considers that the person is the one responsible for their situation (educational, social and labour) and for acquiring the competences for achieving their inclusion. Faced with this approach, we consider necessary to have a broad understanding of employability in order to have a balance between the individual responsibility and the social one (Forrier & Sels, 2003; Williams, Dodd, Steele, & Randall, 2015). That is, between the improvement of personal competences and the development of accessible labour environments.
In this regard, WISEs obey a double and complementary logic. On the one hand, they allow people in situation of vulnerability to improve their employability and access the labour market through the training and the personal, social and labour orientation they offer. On the other hand, they make employment accessible to people who have not had opportunities to participate in productive processes thus reinforcing their inclusive aim. As explained by McQuaid and Lindsay (2005), these initiatives focus on the demand and the supply of employment. From a conceptual point of view, they consider that the responsibility for the inclusion of those more vulnerable corresponds to both the individual and the institutions and social agents (SIIS, 2011).
On the basis of these assumptions, the study we present in this paper is based on a comprehensive model in which the learning processes that take place in WISEs are understood as learning trajectories, in which personal and contextual factors result in the improvement of employability of the IW of these enterprises. More precisely, we will present those contextual factors more determinant in the process of improving employability.
This work is being developed within the framework of a larger project (EDU2013-45919-R) —Educational, accompanying, qualification and personal developmental processes in Work Integration Companies: innovating social inclusion through employment— funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. As explained in Marhuenda (2017), this project aims to study the educational practices in the WISEs and their effects upon the transitions of workers into the ordinary labour market and, therefore, upon their social inclusion.
