Work integration social enterprises (WISE) are companies that have been known under different names in most European countries since approximately the end of the 1970s. They are run under very different legal formats and show a variety of features, and can thus be rather heterogeneous. Nevertheless, they all share a common aim: they are companies set up with the main purpose of providing jobs for people who, for several reasons, have not been able to find employment in an ordinary firm even if they have the capacity to be productive. The purpose of WISE, therefore, is to establish a working relationship with those individuals who have been already rejected by the labour market and to hire them to do the work precisely for the same reasons that they have not been able to find a job or hold it under ordinary circumstances. WISEs are in fact the last in a series of measures in Western societies to facilitate the social inclusion of people through work (Fernández, Galarreta & Martńez, 2008), a step to be added on top of other measures such as rehabilitation of drug abuse, reinsertion in society after having served a custodial sentence, vocational training courses, social aid and others. WISEs are intended not only to facilitate entry into the labour market for those persons, but also to foster their employability by continuing the socio-educational process in which they have been involved throughout their journey out of social exclusion. It is in this sense that WISEs have been established as learning organizations in which the productive activity that they foster plays an instrumental role in achieving the expected benefits: Economic survival in order to satisfy employees' educational needs until they are able to 'abandon' the organization and enter the ordinary labour market. Despite their short history,WISEs have already been studied in several European countries and some of that research has been published (Borzaga & Defourny, 2001; Castelli, 2005; Nyssens, 2006;). Several approaches have been taken in these studies, mainly economic and sociological. In this chapter I attempt to provide a pedagogical perspective, considering WISEs as learning environments in which people may experience employment relations in such a manner that they will be well equipped subsequently to experience everyday life in a positive and constructive manner. WISEs are therefore intended to act as 'schools of citizenship' for individuals with a record of failure in their lives. Also, WISEs are learning environments for those who are in charge of supporting their less fortunate workmates in companies. First, I will point to the main results of the research done on WISEs and which provide us with a background of assumptions enabling us to approach them from an educational perspective. Second, I will introduce the case of Novaterra and Iuna, two organizations which promote WISEs and which have been networking since the early 1990s, paying particular attention to the work processes they use in order to achieve their goal of social integration and to perform their related tasks. Third, I will examine the work of Iuna from different perspectives of work-based learning, work-related learning, in-company training and others that, even if produced and developed in ordinary working environments, provide us with good elements to address educational processes in WISEs.© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.
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