The Match’In project team gave a presentation at the annual conference of the International Research Society for Public Management in Bologna on April 9th 2025.
The Match’In project was developed in a participatory manner, involving people seeking protection in the planning and implementation in various ways. In the course of developing the criteria, people with a history of fleeing themselves, who had already gone through the German asylum procedure, took part in focus groups. In a next step, people who were currently in the initial reception centers of the participating federal states supported the project by participating in pre-tests. This involved testing the procedures for the pilot phase of the project as well as the questionnaires and information materials. A third group were the actual project participants, who provided their data for the matching process and were allocated to the participating municipalities based on the distribution proposal of the Match’In algorithm.
The role that these different groups of people played in the project was critically analyzed in the presentation. It focused on reflecting on the following aspects: not putting project participants in a less favorable position than those distributed via the regular procedure, the role of refugees involved in focus groups and pre-tests, the transfer of data to the municipalities and the impact of the digital divide on the opportunities for participation of those seeking protection.
Speaker: Katharina Euler, University of Hildesheim
Photo: Katharina Euler
