Migration

Talent Beyond Boundaries

Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB) supports refugees to make use of their potential and leverage their professional qualifications to migrate through safe and regular pathways.

About the project

While millions of refugees are unable to utilize their skills in the labor market due to legal uncertainties, labor shortages are hindering economic growth in many countries. Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB) is tackling these challenges jointly. Inspired by similar existing programs in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, TBB has launched a pilot program in Germany to raise awareness in politics, administration, and business about the potential of labor migration for displaced professionals and to expand the narrative of refugees as "merely seekers of protection" to include their talents, professional qualifications, and useful contributions to host societies.

Grounded in a baseline assessment of current pathways and obstacles in Germany, funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation, a cross-sector working group is set to tackle the specific challenges of labor migration for refugee professionals and to propose solutions for politics and administration.

The Robert Bosch Stiftung is also part of the “Bellagio Coalition for Green Skills Pathways”, which was co-initiated by Talent Beyond Boundaries. The aim of the Bellagio Coalition is to support education and training in the areas of sustainability and green transformation and to consider the impact of climate change on labor markets and migration movements.

Bellagio Coalition for Green Skills Pathways

In the Bellagio Coalition, TBB brings together various stakeholders from civil society, the philanthropic sector, business, and national and international politics to coordinate support, expertise, resources, funding, and advocacy for the labor migration of refugees in the area of green transformations, and to strengthen legal migration pathways for the benefit of all stakeholders. The Robert Bosch Foundation supports training and educational measures in the fields of sustainability and green transformation in the countries of origin and countries of first asylum in the Global South.
This aims to open regular migration pathways to countries in the Global North for refugees, address the labor shortage in the sustainability sector of industrialized nations, and simultaneously make local economies in countries of origin and first host countries in the Global South more sustainable. In regional hubs, refugees and citizens of the first host countries are trained together in "Green Skills," and are connected with local actors in the green economy. Depending on individual interests and the labor markets of the host countries, the hubs also provide information on regular migration pathways to countries in the Global North.

We aim to create and highlight various regular pathways for migrants and refugees with a focus on the affected populations. Many of these individuals possess skills and talents that are urgently needed in the labor markets of the Global North to advance sustainable economic growth. However, displaced professionals are often unable to participate in the labor market due to their legal status and receiving societies are unaware of these individuals' potential. At the Global Refugee Forum, Germany has pledged to improve labor migration pathways for refugees. Based on this commitment, we support pilot programs that develop concrete measures to utilize existing entry opportunities and frameworks, with the goal of highlighting the talents of refugees and improving the integration of skilled workers with refugee backgrounds into the German labor market.

The mutual benefits of labor migration for displaced professionals should be established and mainstreamed through the expansion of TBB's work in Germany. With its pilot program in Germany, TBB aims to reach a significant number of refugees, support them through their potential labor migration to Germany and raise awareness among employers about the opportunities and importance of labor mobility programs that include displaced professionals. The pilot program in Germany, alongside TBB's work in other countries, contributes to making new approaches and sustainable solutions for dealing with forced migration visible. TBB focuses on labor migration for individuals with a refugee background, who gain access primarily based on their qualifications rather than their protection needs, providing a complementary approach to humanitarian resettlement programs.

The starting point of the project is a baseline assessment that utilizes the expertise and networks of the Robert Bosch Foundation and other global partners. Based on this preliminary analysis for Germany, TBB draws on its experience in developing similar programs across Europe to collaborate with administration, civil society, international organizations, and businesses to develop solutions for challenges such as the recognition of professional qualifications, language acquisition, and targeted trainings for refugees. Additionally, with the help of its talent catalog and based on a "Hire-Train-Move" model, TBB is working to further qualify interested refugees in countries of first asylum so that their labor migration to Germany can occur through safe and legal pathways.