Making the most of immigrant skills in Europe

By Peta Lee. Modifications to existing systems in Europe are vital to removing barriers and improving the recognition of immigrants’ foreign qualifications, according to a European Union-funded report titled Tackling Brain Waste. The document, compiled by Madeleine Sumption for the Migration Policy Institute’s project Immigration, Skills, and Mobility in the Transatlantic Labor Market, concluded that more detailed evidence on the costs and benefits of possible interventions was needed if policy decisions were to be directed more effectively. The report pointed out, for example, that little was known about how employers valued formal assessments of qualifications equivalence (or if they were even aware of the various types of policy designed to facilitate recognition internationally), and many of the programmes to support retraining had never been evaluated. More...