From Strangers to Workers: Skills and EU Labour Market Integration of Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Applicants (SIRIUS)

Main funder

European Commission

Funder's project number: 770515

Funds granted by main funder (€)

221 341,25

Funding program

RIA Research and Innovation Action, H2020 (2014-2020) (H2020)

Project timetable

Project start date: 01/01/2018

Project end date: 31/07/2021

Summary

A descriptive objective: To provide systematic evidence on post-2014 migrants, refugees and asylum applicants especially women and young migrants and their potential for labour market and, more broadly, social, integration. This objective will be achieved through research on current and past migrants and refugees (surveys conducted so far among refugees are too partial and scattered) and on the different macro-, meso-, and micro-level enablers and barriers to enter the labour market.

The proposed project aims to answer the following research questions:
• Which are the key barriers to, and enablers for, accessing decent work opportunities and working conditions for post-2014 refugees and migrants?
• How rigid or flexible are national labour markets and under which conditions can they expand and absorb large numbers of newcomers without condemning either the latter to structural unemployment or pushing out low-skilled natives and previous immigrant cohorts?
• Is the reason why most of the new arrivals end up in low paying and precarious jobs due to their high numbers, a skills mismatch, or language and cultural barriers and what public policies are most successful in overcoming skills and cultural barriers for employment?
• How to prevent long-term unemployment: entry level jobs and deregulation?
• How to link social benefits for refugees and unemployed migrants with access to the job market?
• How to make use of human capital: certification and retraining of qualifications?
• How to prevent labour market segregation and discrimination in employment?
• What drives the needs and capacity for integration of post-2014 migrants, refugees, and asylum applicants as well as their variations across countries and European labour markets?
• What are the strategies and practices implemented in different EU Member States to facilitate access into employment? What do we know about their effectiveness? What are good practices and lessons learned in different countries? What constitutes an optimal mix of policy pathways for labour market integration?
• What common challenges and what specificities across EU Member States? Is there scope for mutual learning, cooperation, and policy transferability?
• How can policies that aim at restricting secondary migrations of asylum applicants and refugees within and between EU Member States that upset burden-sharing and redistribution schemes be reconciled with mobility that is needed to match supply and demand in labour markets?
• Policy conclusions: what are the priorities regarding labour market integration of refugees and asylum applicants? What scope for an EU-wide inclusive integration agenda based on a Human Rights-Based Approach to migration and decent work?