Findings will be discussed at webinar TODAY BRUSSELS — As labour and skills shortages intensify across the European Union, governments will need to attract workers from abroad even as they are investing in their domestic workforces. The key question is: What policies and practices can help ensure that labour migration benefits countries of destination and origin, employers and migrant workers alike at a time of increasing competition for human capital? Current migration channels are too fragmented, slow or opaque to match workers and employers efficiently, while poorly regulated recruitment practices in some corridors expose migrants to high costs and exploitation. A new study from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and MPI Europe assesses the policies and practices in five existing labour migration corridors to Europe and offers ways to achieve this ‘quadruple win’ benefiting migrants, employers and countries at both ends of the migration journey. The report, Best practices for designing and managing labour migration corridors to Europe, maps labour migration into Europe and draws lessons from the Bangladesh-Portugal, India-Germany, Peru-Italy, Senegal-Spain and Vietnam-Hungary corridors. The MPI Europe and MPI analysts draw on extensive fieldwork in these countries, interviews with migrants and employers, and quantitative mapping of 122 global corridors to identify what makes corridors effective, where they fall short and how the European Union can scale sustainable and ethical labour mobility and related investments in skills. The analysis reveals how different labour migration corridors emerge and grow, and often, the gaps between policy and practice when it comes to accessing migration opportunities and related recruitment. It explores what avenues to growth might look like in different migration contexts, including ways to support skills development and how to tackle worker exploitation and brain drain. With more than three-quarters of all European small and medium-sized enterprises reporting difficulty finding workers, ‘labour and skills shortages across the European Union threaten the bloc’s economic growth’, analysts Kate Hooper, María Belén Zanzuchi, Abigail Goldfarb, Ravenna Sohst and Bertrand Steiner write. ‘By enhancing labour migration governance, strengthening international recruitment channels and investing in skills development and circulation, Europe can better leverage the benefits of well-managed migration—not only to meet its own labour market needs but also to enhance the development impacts of migration for countries of origin and migrant workers’. The report, produced with support from the European Commission, offers a range of recommendations that can be taken forward by EU or national policymakers and other stakeholders. These include: - Improving access to clear, centralised information on job opportunities, recruitment processes and visa procedures, as well as facilitating employer-worker matching through tools such as the recently agreed EU Talent Pool.
- Supporting partner countries in strengthening labour migration governance, ethical recruitment and data systems.
- Streamlining and speeding up visa procedures via joint consular activities, simplified documentation and digital processing.
- Investing in scalable skills mobility partnerships that link training with mobility opportunities.
- Enhancing skills recognition so workers can fully utilise their qualifications in EU labour markets.
- Strengthening oversight and protections in high-risk sectors, including agriculture, domestic work and construction.
Read the report here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/labor-migration-corridors-europe. For more of MPI Europe’s work, visit: www.mpieurope.org. * * * The authors and other experts will discuss the findings at a webinar today at 11 a.m. CET. To learn more and to register, click here. | 
