Overarching trends and recommendations to improve labour market access for displaced migrants: Key findings and recommendations

This policy brief will provide an overview of trends in labour market integration for displaced migrants across Sweden, Italy, Cyprus and Scotland. Specifically, this brief will: 1) discuss overarching policy parameters that define labour market integration frameworks for asylum seekers and refugees, 2) highlight the shared barriers that prevent migrants from fully engaging with employability services and 3) discuss issues to consider beyond traditional ‘employability services’ that may impact labour market integration for displaced migrants. It should be noted that while more context-specific recommendations are laid out in each country’s full report, select recommendations corresponding to each thematic section are embedded throughout the brief. GLIMER is informed by a combination of rigorous policy analysis, qualitative research with multi-party stakeholders and secondary analysis. This policy brief is reliant on policy documents, statistics and evaluations together with interviews with stakeholders from national, regional and local authorities and the third sector conducted in 2019 in all four countries. In Sweden, GLIMER members worked across the region of Skåne and the municipalities of Malmö and Eslöv, two municipalities in a close geographic distance and part of the Öresund region that connects Sweden to Denmark and continental Europe. In Italy, researchers worked in different locations covering the territory of Calabria, focusing on two main cities (Cosenza, Catanzaro) and in places with a high density of non-Italian residents (Lamezia Terme, Villa San Giovanni). In Cyprus, work consisted of ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth semi-structured interviews with stakeholders from devolved and local government, as well as the third sector in Nicosia. Lastly, in Scotland consortium members worked across several locations that included both the site of Dispersal (Glasgow) as well as areas involved in the Vulnerable Person’s Resettlement Scheme (VPRS). This policy brief does not represent an exhaustive depiction of each country’s findings. To access each country’s full report, please visit: http://www.glimer.eu/outputs/