Through the pilot program „CADS – Community Advisors – Digital Street work for EU Workers in Germany“ the initial project “Digital Street work “ is now expanding. The current project, following the precedent one, acknowledged and designed by the Office for the Equal Treatment of EU Workers at the Chancellery, implements the approach of outreach counselling, and provides informative content to EU workers and jobseekers on social media.
The digital approach, the legally verified counselling and information content, the use of social media platforms and the institutional network are to be developed and expanded. The ultimate goal of the project is to transform this successful methodology into a durable program. For this purpose, we are working in ten languages – Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Croatian, Greek, English and French, testing and evaluating technological innovations for information and performing counselling work while developing learning material, information campaigns and new information tools for our target groups.
Thanks to the Freedom of Movement Act, the migration from other EU countries to Germany has become particularly easy and at the same time one of the most significant migration flows. Integration often fails, among other reasons, due to poor working conditions or workers undertaking positions that are below their own qualification level. As a result, EU immigrants migrate again – this time from Germany. Gross and net immigration rates have been declining for more than five years. Nevertheless, EU immigrants remain one of the main pillars of employment growth in the last decade. It is therefore of major importance to significantly improve the existing conditions of labor market for EU workers in Germany. This will lead to a decrease of integration dropouts and migration incidents.
The CADS project was initiated in February 2023 with the aim of empowering EU workers about their rights and competencies in the labor market, job search, dealing with incidents of discrimination as well as in further integration processes. Immigrants receive high quality counselling on digital spaces and platforms where they exchange information, while at the same time the misinformation circulating in these spaces is counteracted.
The project covers nine fields of action:
- Analyzing and monitoring social media spaces with a focus on the ten largest EU immigrant groups,
- Providing outreach and easily accessible information and counselling on the social media of newly arrived EU immigrants, conducting quality assurance and documentation, while combating misinformation,
- Creating multimedia providing information content supplemented with e-learning material,
- Testing and evaluating innovative information and counselling campaigns, with a focus on sectors which are threatened by precarious and exploitative working conditions, as well as using classical methodology for target groups that cannot be reached effectively otherwise,
- Technological developments, especially in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and their potential implementation in information and counselling work,
- Establishment of an advisory board of migrant organizations and experts to coordinate strategic decisions, insights, and plans of the project,
- Regular organization of (specialist) events and workshops with strategic partners that address content-related and methodological issues of information and counselling work for EU immigrants and serve networking and coordination,
- Temporary implementation of a separate counselling service for 24-hour care workers in German households (so-called live-ins), and its preparation for transfer outside the project,
- Model development and sustainable establishment of the outreach counselling methodology and information work, as well as its incorporation as a permanent program and an integral part of the standard counselling system in Germany.
The Office for the Equal Treatment of EU Workers of the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration and the Federal Government Commissioner against Racism, has the task of supporting EU immigrants in exercising the rights to which they are entitled within the framework of the free movement of workers in Germany. It supports the project CADS – Community Advisors – Digital Street work for EU workers in Germany, which is conducted by Minor – Digital.
