WASHINGTON, DC — Employment and skills-based mobility projects aimed at connecting workers from lower- and middle-income countries with jobs abroad have yet to realize their full potential despite growing interest from European and other advanced economies eager to address acute labor shortages, a Migration Policy Institute (MPI) policy brief out today finds. Legal migration pathways that connect unemployed workers in countries with persistent unemployment to hard-to-fill jobs abroad and reduce barriers to mobility (for example by improving recognition of foreign-earned qualifications) are gaining interest in both origin and destination countries, with support from private-sector and institutional actors. Last year alone, the European Commission launched its flagship Talent Partnerships Initiative and the World Bank announced its support for 10 new Global Skills Partnerships. To date, however, migration partnerships have facilitated the movement of only small numbers of workers and have encountered challenges in fully realizing their anticipated benefits. These include difficulties identifying relevant job sectors in origin and destination countries, building up project infrastructure or securing private-sector engagement. In Competing for Talent: What Role Can Employment- and Skills-Based Mobility Projects Play? analysts Kate Hooper and Ravenna Sohst look at how different types of cooperation can support legal migration pathways, as well as common challenges these projects face. The brief also discusses strategies for achieving economies of scale and these projects' unique value—including the chance they offer to test new migration corridors or new recruitment models, while broadening cooperation opportunities with partner countries. The researchers find the mobility projects share several common challenges, including: - The mismatch between project duration and goals. It took Belgium’s Enabel development agency nearly three years to build infrastructure and capacity in Tunisia, where it had no prior networks. However, mobility projects often operate in two- and three-year funding cycles, in pilot format, making it difficult to generate sustainable labor pathways.
- Difficulty securing private-sector engagement. Long administrative wait times and employer uncertainty about prospective workers’ qualifications and support needs limit buy in, blunting the viability of mobility projects for employers, who already can turn to private recruitment channels.
Recent experiences underscore the need for additional preparation and investments in local labor market analysis and training capacity, as well as a focus on sectors that are experiencing long-term labor shortages. “The journey toward achieving economies of scale in migration partnerships is both promising and complex,” the authors conclude. Read the brief here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/competing-talent-mobility-projects. The brief results from a partnership between MPI and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Earlier research in this collaboration has focused on green reintegration and the linking of migrant reintegration assistance with development goals. Earlier MPI-GIZ series focused on Critical Migration Governance Issues in a Changed World, examining implementation issues around the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, and Towards a Global Compact for Migration: A Development Perspective, meant to inform compact negotiations and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. | 
