Integration through “soft skills.” A “social start-up” to support refugees’ integration into the labor market

This article tackles the recent changes in French policy on the integration of foreigners, focusing on the priority given to refugees’ employment. Building on an ethnographic investigation of an organization charged with pursuing this goal, the article analyzes the integration work performed by the organization and mandated for the refugees. The start-up offers the refugees language classes but also training in “soft skills,” through which the immigrants are enjoined to comply with a series of behavioral norms supposedly essential to their entrance to and success in the labor market.