The role of civil society organisations in labour market integration of young immigrants in Sweden: An analysis of the organisation Right To Play

During the year of 2015 and the large migration wave that hit Europe, many unaccompanied young refugees came to Sweden. For this particular group, the challenge is to become integrated to the labour market in order to receive a permanent residency permit in Sweden after they graduate their upper secondary education. Over the past few years, it has become more evident that the state is not able to handle the integration process alone, and that it is time to shed light on contemporary initiatives deriving from other actors, such as civil society organisations. The question is whether these initiatives have been successful in bringing about change, and in what ways. The purpose of this thesis was therefore to analyse the civil society organisation Right To Play that uses sports as a tool for labour market integration, through the theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship by identifying its rationales, resources, and relations that are used to prompt institutional change. Through three semi-structured interviews and one observation, together with secondary data, a narrative analysis of their stories was conducted. The results showed that the organisation manage to mix a set of strong rationales of sports, labour market integration, and youth agency, to transform the youth from being passive receivers of integration to become active agents and important human resources within the organisation, and to connect the youth with other actors in the society through external relations. The study also concluded that the elements of rationales, resources, and relations, that are used to investigate the power of an organisation to prompt institutional change, also helps the organisation to become resilient in times of crises