Master’s thesis: Active participation of immigrants in the public sector – dream or reality?
Master's Thesis by Ana Kyra Bekš explored the intersection between public participation, policy making and service design.
Master's Thesis by Ana Kyra Bekš explored the intersection between public participation, policy making and service design. As a result, immigrants and public servants were actively involved in an online design process and co-created three prototypes of solutions that aim to improve immigrants’ participation in policy making.
Rapid environmental, social, and technological changes are pushing governments beyond their established practices. The Finnish government recognises this and the need for fundamental changes of relationships between the government and people as it is stated in the Finnish Strategy for Public Governance Renewal. In a recently completed thesis, Bekš, a master student at Laurea University of Applied Sciences, explored how public participation could be improved, focusing on immigrants’ participation in policy making.
Using design to co-create in the public sector
Through theoretical frameworks and development work, she concluded that design could improve immigrants’ active involvement by co-creating solutions together with immigrants and public servants. She designed and delivered a series of virtual workshops as a way to engage both stakeholder groups, which turned out to be an effective and efficient way for co-creation. Three prototypes of tools were designed that are not limited to increase only immigrants’ but any citizens’ participation in policy making.
Lack of commitment, not methods
As part of the thesis research, Bekš talked to different stakeholders including policymakers, designers, NGO representatives, immigrants, policy researchers, journalists, and activists to gain a holistic perspective on the issue. Based on theoretical frameworks of public participation and qualitative research, she observed that public servants mostly practice one-way participation and that there is a lack of active participation in the public sector. The reason for that is not a lack of participatory approaches but rather a lack of top-down commitment and support from governments to implement participation beyond consultation.
Unexpected results of a design process
As the author reflected on the theory and the experience of the design process, she created two additional constructs. First, Bekš created a framework that combines different participatory levels and the design process. This model can help designers be more intentional about participation. The second result is based on an observation that there is a divide between theoretical view on the design process and the reality of the process put into practice. To minimise this gap, the author created a new visualisation of the design process. The proposed model could, for example, aid teachers when introducing design to students and want to illustrate how design theory translates to reality.
Background
The development work of the thesis was conducted during 2021 and 2022. The case was provided by the Finnish Ministry of the Interior to support the development of Finland's comprehensive migration policy that started in 2021. Bekš chose to work on this project as she is interested in improving the public sector and sees a substantial opportunity to tackle complex social problems using design.
Further information
Ana Kyra Bekš
MBA in Service Innovation and Design
hello@anakyrabeks.com