ABSTRACT
The persistence of structural unemployment among certain groups, the difficul-ties that traditional active labour market policies face in integrating these groups and the need for more flexible integration policies naturally raise questions about the role that social enterprises can play in combating unemployment and fostering employment growth. Indeed, although the rate of employment varies greatly among European countries, with high rates of participation in the UK and Nordic countries and the lowest ones in Italy, all EU countries are characterized by low rates of employment for certain groups, such as women, non-European workers, older people and/or low-skilled workers. This becomes clear from Table 11.1 below, which is based on seven EU countries. These lower rates of employment represent lost or underutilized human capital from a labour market perspective. Thus, we need to consider what instruments and policies might facilitate greater participation by excluded groups. In recent decades, work integration social enterprises (WISEs) have undertaken numerous experiments in most EU countries to increase the labour market participation of these excluded groups.
