Hannah Prömper

Fikret Aydin

Former employees:

Keanu Kawald

According to the expert debate, engagement is highly significant in democratic societies, can continuously create and renew their socio-moral foundations, secure the political legitimisation of the democratic institutional system and contribute to social integration and cohesion (Backhaus-Maul 2024).

Engagement is an integral part of social change, whether as its "driver", object or result. It is still mostly performed on a permanent and binding basis in relatively formalised contexts; at the same time, a growing trend towards individualisation, spontaneity, short-termism and self-organisation in engagement has been emerging for decades (Speck et al. 2024, Simonson et al. 2022).

However, like everything in society, engagement is not only positive, but also ambivalent. It can have an integrative effect across milieus ("bridging"), but it can also reinforce social closure in groups, strata and classes ("bonding") and possibly drive tensions and polarisation in a society (Putnam 2000).

In the face of political, economic and ecological crises and corresponding transformation processes, organised engagement in its various forms comes under pressure to change.

The practice- and transfer-oriented research project explores the question of how the change in individual commitment affects processes and structures of the organisation of commitment under fundamentally changed social conditions (grundlegend Kühl 2020).

Specifically, the study analyses

1. how the change in individual engagement affects different organisation(s) of engagement, distinguishing between

• traditional established and newly emerged as well as
• formalised and less formalised forms of engagement;

2. what ideas, concepts and strategies practitioners have for coping with change, in particular for recruiting and retaining volunteers, taking into account the

• the emergence of new milieus, age groups and groups of people as well as
• changed political, economic and ecological conditions;

3. which new and innovative organisational (re)forms are being developed in volunteering, in particular

• the development of new types of self-organised action processes
• the procedural and structural handling of this change by existing and traditional organisations.

The research project aims to capture the range of engagement from informal to hierarchical organisational forms (Kühl 2020) as well as the different age groups and milieus of those involved in fields of organised engagement yet to be selected, such as education, leisure, culture, political advocacy as well as accident, rescue and volunteer fire brigades.

The data will be collected by means of a quantitative online survey and guideline-based qualitative expert interviews and group discussions. Based on the criteria "rural" and "economically relatively structurally weak", one study region in western Germany and one in eastern Germany were selected (BMWK 2024, Höferl/Jelinek 2007, Koschatzky/Kroll 2019). The survey and the evaluation of the empirical findings as well as the possible consequences for action resulting from them are discussed intensively and in a results-oriented manner with the practice partners (Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft der Freiwilligenagenturen e. V. and Stiftung Aktive Bürgerschaft, both: Berlin).

Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
Research Institute for Social Cohesion (FGZ)
Große Steinstraße 79-80
06108 Halle

Dr Holger Backhaus-Maul (project leader)

Dr Enrica Audano (research assistant)

Fenja Aey (student assistant)

Federal Association of Volunteer Agencies (Berlin)

Active Citizenship Foundation (Berlin)

Backhaus-Maul, H. (2024): Engagement - eine überraschend wenig erforschte Handlungspraxis gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt, in: Blog des Forschungsinstituts Gesellschaftlicher Zusammenhalt (FGZ) from 16 January 2024; available online at: fgzrisc.hypotheses.org/4553

Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) (2024): Coordination framework for the joint task "Improvement of regional economic structures" from 1 January 2024, available online at: www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/J-L/koordinierungsrahmen-gemeinschaftsaufgabe-verbesserung-regionale-wirtschaftsstruktur.pdf

Höferl, K./Jelinek B. (2007): From construct to empiricism: observations on the "structural strength or structural weakness" of Austrian municipalities: in M. Schrenk/V. Popovich/ J. Benedikt (eds.), Corp 2007 Proceedings, Morrisville, N. C., pp. 781-790

Koschatzky, K./Kroll, H. (2019): Innovation-based regional structural change - Structurally weak regions in Germany. Fraunhofer ISI Working Papers Enterprise and Region No. R1/2019, Karlsruhe; available online at: www.isi.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/isi/dokumente/ccp/unternehmen-region/2019/ap_r1_2019.pdf

Kühl, Stefan (2020): Organisations. A very short introduction, 2nd edition, Wiesbaden: Springer VS

Putnam, R. (2000): Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York et al.: Simon & Schuster

Simonson, J./Kelle, N./Kausmann, C./Tesch-Römer, C. (eds.) 2022: Volunteering in Germany. The German Volunteering Survey 2019, Wiesbaden: Springer VS

Speck, K./Backhaus-Maul, H./Kemnitzer, T./Sattler, C./Stauvermann, L. (2024): Volunteer agencies in Germany. Selected empirical findings from the quantitative long-term study, in: J. Fischer/C. Gille/B. Haas/V. Schachler/G. Scharnberg/J. Schlicht (eds.), Wandel durch und im Engagement? Voluntaris special volume, Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp.137-151

DSEE call for research