Building inclusive and resilient societies in the face of multiple crises

Abstract

This panel, consisting of an interdisciplinary team of researchers, aims to critically reflect on and discuss insights into the possibilities and limitations of building inclusive and resilient societies. This is especially relevant since individuals, public organisations, and enterprises need to adapt to a continuously changing world facing various grand challenges, i.e. the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the refugee crisis, and growing inequality. What are the necessary requirements for an inclusive and adaptive society that respects all beings notwithstanding race, gender, class, or generation? A society that engages its inhabitants in decision-making and is able to adapt despite adversities and even strengthen itself in the process? This panel looks at institutional barriers and effective enablers of inclusive, collaborative, and adaptive capacities of stakeholders and institutions within three studies that are part of the BASICS for Resilience research project in the Netherlands. Each project departs from another social scientific discipline and addresses the position of a specific vulnerable societal group. By integrating and sharing experiences, the BASICS research project seeks answers to several questions. How do meanings of inclusivity and resilience vary across groups and require different approaches? What can we learn from each other in relation to societal resilience? How do different groups create platforms to voice their needs and concerns? How do they navigate and participate in regulatory processes that affect their lives and how can their role and position within society be strengthened? In the first sub-project, Tara Fiorito (VU) uses her study of the societal inclusion and exclusion of undocumented youth in the Netherlands to help understand and explore the dynamics, practices, and processes necessary to strengthen the inclusive, collaborative, and adaptive (i.e. resilient) capacities of our institutions and societies. In the second sub-project, Eugenia Rosca and Cheng-Yong Xiao (RUG) study the power relations, organizational logics, and overcoming of divergent interests in the collaboration between social enterprises (promoting the social justice goals of vulnerable groups) and commercial organizations. In the third sub-project, Lianne Cremers, Cato Janssen, and Kees Boersma (VU) focus on collective experiences of organisational trauma in nursing homes in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis and processes of healing unlocking the potential to transform into resilient institutions. In this context, the panel discussion aims to share knowledge and experiences of the three teams of researchers coming from different disciplines regarding the nature of inclusion and resilience in different contexts (supply chains, elderly care, educational and social domain). With this panel, we would like to facilitate more knowledge exchange between disciplines and projects that study similar questions, but in different contexts and from different theoretical lenses. The pursuit of inclusive and resilient societies can be regarded as a grand challenge and urgently needed amid growing concerns about the multiple global crises of our time. We argue that through closer integration among different disciplines, dominant views can be resisted, alternative perspectives can be offered, and new creative solutions and imaginations can surface. Therefore, we consider this panel discussion to be highly relevant and timely for the conference.

Title	Details
The corona pandemic and participatory governance: Responding to the vulnerabilities of secondary school students in Europe	View Paper Details
Covid-19-related Trauma and the Need for Organizational Healing in a Dutch Nursing Home	View Paper Details
Boundary Spanning in Social Impact Supply Chains: Improving Lives Through Coffee	View Paper Details
A taxonomy of social entrepreneurial models: A cluster analysis	View Paper Details
Exploring institutional and regulatory change: the case of undocumented youth in the Netherlands	View Paper Details