Background: Integration of immigrants has been high on the policy agenda for the last 20 years. Many immigrants face specific integration challenges and often continue to experience poorer outcomes than their native-born peers at several levels of life. Integration of immigrants is vital for social cohesion and inclusive growth and for the ability of migrants to become self-reliant, productive citizens. New evidence indicates that the past interventions and policies to facilitate inclusion are not sustainable because they are small-scale, informal, and complementary to the core services and lack systematic efforts to scale up with the formal integration programming.

Purpose: The aim is to propose a framework for an alternative way to empower socially vulnerable populations to meaningfully participate in their host communities and foster their social capital and -bonding through work-integrated learning (WIL) and Critical Participatory Action Research (C-PAR).

Methods: Systematic narrative synthesis of existing evidence and best practices.

Findings: When combined, C-PAR and WIL seem to be effective way to mobilize and empower localcommunity groups. This approach facilitates societal change, capacity building, and co-creation of knowledge needed for self-led integration. The study suggests novel indicators to evaluate the integration process leading to better social inclusion and quality of life.

Conclusion: For scaling up and long-term sustainability, the approach needs to combine the proven successful local bottom-up initiatives with larger top-down interventions.