(23 February 2017) – In response to the recent wave of arrivals of asylum seekers to Europe, many social innovations, often led by ordinary citizens, have flourished. Antoine Saint-Denis (AEIDL) draws some lessons for policy-making.

A common element among all these initiatives is that their target groups are actively involved in them, and this is a key factor for the success of integration policies.
These initiatives reveal also a number of ongoing evolutions in the ways citizens, NGOs, social services and public schemes interact, as well as with regard to the role of the public, non-for-profit and private sectors.
This leads to the conclusion that there is still a lot to be done to enhance the complementarity between services, partnerships and even co-creation.