Integrating newcomers into the labour market

Overleg tussen een groep chirurgen

Piet Groot is a PhD candidate investigating the integration of newcomers into the labour market. For his project he combines historical research of old work communities (in this case: craft guilds) with psychological studies of the reaction of a local population to migrant newcomers. This extraordinary combination of social history with social psychology results from the goal of the SCOOP: Sustainable Cooperation program, of which his promotional tract is part. This program aims to pursue "the interdisciplinary study of sustainable cooperation as a key feature of resilient societies".

The historical analysis will focus on formal entry criteria of the Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild that may impact the ease with which newcomers can enter and integrate into the organisation. The hope is that such an analysis will uncover previously unknown factors that may lead to the successful integration of newcomers into pre-existing organisations. These uncovered factors will then be tested again in a contemporary setting, in order to learn whether a) these factors still play a role in the integration of newcomers in today’s labour market and b) which thoughts and feelings of the receiving party may further explain this integration process.

The PhD thesis was completed on 14 June 2023.

Funding

This study is part of the research program Sustainable Cooperation – Roadmaps to Resilient Societies (SCOOP). The SCOOP program was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) in the context of its 2017 Gravitation Program.

Researcher

Piet Groot

Supervisors