Labour Mobility Scheme Guide

As the MPF continues to support multiple stakeholders who come forward with innovative ideas for labour mobility schemes, the Labour Mobility Scheme Guide is an initiative for mainly EU stakeholders who are interested in setting up mobility schemes, but is also highly relevant for partner countries. It seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of how to set up a mobility scheme, with an in-depth guidance on the core aspects to consider when designing them. 

Drawing from the MPF’s lessons learned from the first and second cohorts of pilot projects, the guide suggests the following 5 key steps for designing labour mobility schemes.

1. Setting out motivations and objectives. Setting up a labour mobility scheme begins by clearly outlining the reasons and objectives for the intervention. Understanding countries’ of destination labour market challenges and opportunities, migration pathways, skills and education levels is essential to evidence the motive and objective.
2. Choosing a sector and a country. The second step is to select the most relevant sector and a country of origin for a scheme. Researching and analysing countries with corresponding labour market supply or demand, government structures, migration policies or skill levels help when deciding on countries and a target sector.
3. Choosing the duration and type of mobility. The third step is the selection of the most appropriate time frame and type of mobility for the scheme. The time frame can range from circular (temporary) to permanent, and the type can vary among employment, skills development, education or exchange.
4. Designing the scheme. Designing the scheme is a process of forming partnerships, arranging funding mechanisms, and drafting activities.
5. Monitoring and evaluation. To monitor each activities’ results and evaluate the impact of the overall scheme, it is important to set up a monitoring & evaluation framework with dedicated objectives, baselines, and indicators to measure success. Scaling up, depending on what it means to each pilot, is also a step to consider.