Everything in One Place

For newly arrived migrants, accessing information, advice and basic services after arrival often involves considerable hurdles. Various authorities and organisations offer support, but these services are not always sufficiently coordinated. As a result, important services can be hard to find, gaps in provision can emerge, or services may be duplicated. At the same time, problems that could be solved early on can become more complex and costly in the long run.

One possible response to these challenges is the so-called one-stop shop (OSS). One-stop shops bring together or coordinate different support services, creating an easier point of entry into the local integration system. By fostering closer cooperation between public bodies and civil society organisations, they can also help reduce duplicate structures, use existing resources more efficiently and identify support needs earlier.

What are one-stop shops?

The publication “One-stop-shops: coordinating integration from day one” examines different OSS models in European cities, including Düsseldorf, Stockholm and Oulu. It looks at various organisational and governance structures, along with their respective strengths and challenges. The analysis shows that OSS can make a practical contribution to better coordinating integration services and to giving newly arrived people easier access to support immediately after their arrival. At the same time, their effectiveness depends on how they are designed locally and on the surrounding conditions.

What OSS can achieve and what success depends on

One-stop shops offer a more accessible, more needs-oriented and better coordinated way of supporting newcomers, and can thus be a response to an institutionally fragmented “integration landscape”. They have the potential to improve integration through earlier and more efficient support, to make services more effective through better coordination, and to strengthen cooperation between different levels of government and civil society organisations. For OSS to realise this potential in practice, however, several conditions must be met: a shared vision and a common coordination mechanism among all partners; the ability to recognise and adapt to new migration trends, needs and target groups; low-threshold access with a focus on users’ needs; and spaces for encounter and interaction. In addition, OSS need to be understood as a long-term investment in coordination, inclusion and social cohesion. Since many OSS are still funded through short-term project funding, the publication recommends pooling national, local and, where applicable, regional funding rather than relying solely on time-limited EU funding.

About the series “Promising Practices in Migration Policy”

The publication is part of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s series “Promising Practices in Migration Policy”. The series focuses on concrete migration policy approaches in EU member states that can serve as promising and transferable examples. Earlier publications include studies on alternatives to immigration detention and on fair recruitment. Together, the contributions highlight concrete approaches that offer inspiration for policy and practice at European, national and local levels.