Labour Market Integration Challenges of Highly Educated Refugees in Flanders

Abstract

Flanders has been increasingly receiving highly educated asylum seekers and refugees (HER) for the last decade. It is interesting that native-migrant employment gap is higher for highly educated refugees than for lower educated refugees in Flanders. As a part of the ESF project “All-in-one 4HER”, this research aimed to explore the underlying reasons for this fact and define the challenges faced by highly educated refugees during their integration process in the labour market. Having analysed the mixed methods data col-lected, three groups of key findings are explained. While the most important challenge is assessed as the language barrier, it has been found that lack of guidance and information for their education level is another factor lengthening their integration process. Difficulties in transforming their skills and qualifications into the local labour market is also instrumental in lengthening this period. As a solution, a considerable number of them follow examples around them and select shorter, more guaranteed career paths to mostly bottleneck jobs deviating from their previous studies and experiences.