The Centre for Migration Research and Integration Practices at HAW Hamburg is primarily known for its integration practices, which enable young people from third countries to prepare for university studies in Germany with professional support. This work is currently being implemented primarily as part of the AMIF-funded BildungsCHANCE project. However, this is not just a practical project: the important and successful concept enables many young people to enter higher education and thus also pave the way into the labour market for highly qualified specialists. The project develops the potential of individuals and counteracts the shortage of skilled labour. It is therefore not intended to fizzle out after the project period, but rather to be further developed, expanded and stabilised.
An important building block for this endeavour is the accompanying research, which, under the direction of Cornelia Sylla, essentially pursues two goals: On the one hand, the existing services are evaluated using traditional questionnaires as well as observations of everyday processes and qualitative interviews in order to find empirical evidence of their effectiveness and starting points for optimising the services. On the other hand, generalisable factors are to be identified that are suitable for transfer to other institutional settings, with the overall aim of making a contribution to sustainable migration-related higher education development. Specifically, BildungsCHANCE should serve as a pilot for structural developments which - by publicising the research results - will hopefully encourage other universities to develop similar structurally anchored sustainable programmes.
The methodological design for the accompanying research is intentionally very open in order to take account of the dynamics involved in implementing the practical measures. A mixture of diverse data is collected in order to visualise the various perspectives on the work. As a first step, existing data was analysed. After all, BildungsCHANCE is based on years of practical and conceptual work by the Centre for Migration Research and Integration Practices, which has always been accompanied by research. This data was supplemented by observations and exploratory interviews in order to identify topics that will be analysed in greater depth over the coming years.
The first articles for specialist journals are in progress and will already provide comprehensive insights into the potential of structural development processes and the associated challenges.
