Complementary Pathways for Adult Refugees: The Role of VET, Skills and Qualifications

The aim of the project is to increase the evidence base which can support policy- and decision-making in EU MS in designing and implementing complementary pathway mechanisms for admission of adult refugees from a first host country to an EU country through use of VET, skills and qualifications.

At global as well as at EU level the questions of access to international protection and the distribution of asylum seekers and refugees among the international community or among the EU MS have been discussed controversially in debates on international protection.

An increasingly prominent question is how to best make use of the skills available among asylum seekers and refugees to the benefit of those fleeing as well as for the host countries and their communities. The question of skills matching or the matching of prospective trainees/ apprentices, etc. with training opportunities emerged on the political agenda of the EU.

The aim of the project is to increase the evidence base which can support policy- and decision-making in EU MS in designing and implementing complementary pathway mechanisms for admission of adult refugees from a first host country (both EU and non-EU) to an EU country through use of VET, skills and qualifications. The study will result in the identification of such mechanisms and of the conditions for their development and expansion.

The study builds on four Work Assignments (WA) that serve the above-mentioned overall objective:

WA 1 explores the possible design of a VET, skills and qualifications based pathway to protection from a legal and theoretical perspective as well as drawing insights from existing schemes that involve interventions at the supply or demand-side as well as on the intermediary level.

WA 2 analyses the role of VET, skills and qualifications in the implementation of the EU Relocation Programme.

Finally, in WA 3.1 and WA 3.2, a theoretical complementary pathway mechanism supported by VET, skills and qualifications is developed and tested in practice.