Fostering integration and resilience in Germany

As many other worldwide countries, the German society faces multiple challenges and crises, leading to an increased complexity, dynamical changes and uncertainty for citizens and economy. Multiple German stakeholders evidence a reduced ability to transform, openness, and willingness for dialogue, leading to more social division, polarisation, and weakened democracy. 

German sociologists Steffen Mau, Thomas Lux and Linus Westheuser have closely examined the dynamics of the German social division and polarisation with the result that there is still a certain degree of social consensus on many major systemic issues. However, when certain trigger points are touched, the debate intensifies and might lead to social tipping-points (Mau et al., 2024). In order to enable a more differentiated view and debate on social conflicts and trigger points, they have created a heuristic. The so-called "four arenas of inequality" (Mau et al., 2024, p. 47f.): 

1. The "top-bottom" inequalities (distributional and socio-political conflicts over economic goods), 
2. "internal-external" inequalities (belonging and border conflicts such as migration and integration policy), 
3. "we-they" inequalities (equality debates) and 
4. "today-tomorrow" inequalities (ecological time conflicts such as sustainability issues). 

Migration and integration policies have emerged as one of the most pressing issues in the EU elections. Similar tendencies are observed in Germany, where internal-external inequalities significantly influence the political discourse of different political parties. 

The COSIGHT Lab aims to mitigate societal polarisation and enhance societal resilience by increasing conflict resolution and problem-solving skills. This involves developing resilience-promoting citizen processes. The COSIGHT Lab is focused on creating a scalable blueprint method applicable to various topics such as integration, with the overarching goal of fostering societal resilience through innovative participatory projects in Europe.

First COSIGHT Workshop on integration in Hamburg 

The first COSIGHT workshop based its design on enhancing the CoSaturday process with foresight methods. The CoSaturday format is an innovative citizen participatory format designed by Cociety with a representative panel of 100 citizens from Hamburg that addresses different societal conflict topics in a dialogue-based manner. The first COSIGHT workshop focused on the topic of “integration in Hamburg” and served as a pre-test for a further design of the next CoSaturday in October, 2024, that will put emphasis on ‘integration’ as core theme for dialogue. 

The workshop took place on June, 17th 2024 in Hamburg and gathered more than 35 stakeholders coming from a wide range of backgrounds: employees of the different Cociety member organisations, representatives of Hamburg´s political authorities such as the social authority where the topic of integration is politically and structurally located at, academia, company representatives and further civil society organisations that are actively engaged in local integration activities. 

The workshop started with impulse presentations from two experts in the field from both a practical and a rather theoretical/academic perspective: Dr Susanne Muth from the Hamburg social authority gave insights in the city's integration concept followed by a presentation from Dr. Tanja Buch the institute for labour market and occupational research (IAB North) on the current status of labour market integration in Hamburg. Furthermore, Prof. Dr Kerstin Cuhls and Charlotte Freudenberg from the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) introduced all participants to the academic field of foresight as the structured examination of complex futures, specifically the tetralemma method. 

Analysing the dimensions of integration 

Each participant was part of two brainstorming sessions of two dimensions of integration (economic, social, ecological or cultural aspects of integration). After these sessions the results were presented and discussed plenary and finally voted from each participant. This led to the following list of factors which has been voted as the most uncertain on the one hand and the most important on the other hand from the individual participants´ perspectives. The factors served as basis for the second part of the workshop: the exploration and development of several tetralemma's for each of the four dimensions. 

The list of the most uncertain and likewise the most relevant voted factors encompassed: 

• Economy: How does integration ´pay off´; Education; Need at the labour market/integration as opportunity; Next generation here in Germany; Appreciation/two-way integration. 
• Ecology: ´One planet´/ climate justice; Integrating environmental and social policy; Education; Connecting integration with environmental projects 
• Social: Education system; Understanding of integration; Meaning of fears 
• Culture: Identity and definition; Education; Citizen participation; Communication and media. 

These factors will on the one hand be integrated in the second CoSaturday. On the other hand, COSIGHT strives to transfer the results in local politics in the next steps.

Additionally, the workshop identified the most important barriers for integration as well as tools to foster integration in Hamburg from the participants´ perspective: 

The workshop as learning experience 

Summarising the workshop provided relevant insights and results both at a content and at a methodological level. At the content level, alongside addressing systemic resource shortages, dialogue has been identified as a pivotal factor encompassing all four dimensions. This dialogue is essential for developing policy measures that better align with societal needs—both incoming and receiving communities—and for fostering openness, self-reflection, personal connection, and social cohesion. 

On a methodological level, the workshop gave participants an impression of a specific foresight method "Tretalemma", which was new to almost everyone. The tetralemma proved to be an effective approach, facilitating stakeholders' ability to engage in innovative and unconventional thinking applied to a reduced group of stakeholders. This method holds potential for application in both private and professional contexts, encouraging broader, forward-thinking perspectives. 

Next steps & future outlook 

Next to the integration of the results in the upcoming CoSaturday, COSIGHT Lab is currently working on identifying ways in which the content-related results can best be transferred to the political level. This contributes to the Lab's overall goal of empowering citizens by giving them a voice in addressing current and future societal challenges and ensuring that this voice influences policymaking.