Counselling for Refugee and Migrant Integration into the Labour Market – Development of Courses for Higher Education and Public Employment Services Erasmus Project

Project Title

Counselling for Refugee and Migrant Integration into the Labour Market – Development of Courses for Higher Education and Public Employment Services

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Integration of refugees

Project Summary

Refugees’ and migrants’ integration into the labour market as a key strategy to cope with high refugee influx

The influx of refugees and migrants into the European Union has recently reached a high level. The situation – often perceived as crisis – constitutes an urgent call to the member countries of the Eu-ropean Union to work together and develop efficient strategies for coping with the challenges that arise. European countries need to collaborate on solutions to integrate refugees and migrants into their societies and econoies. In this context, labour market integration plays an essential role as it supports all crucial interests by addressing social and economic goals as well as psychological ones.

The key role of career counsellors and the lack of dedicated courses in academic training

Career counsellors play a key role in helping refugees and migrants find their best way into the la-bour market. Self-efficacy and economic productivity can only increase when the demand and supply of talents, competences and skills really match. This is an extremely demanding task for educa-tional and vocational guidance, especially for non-formal or non-European certified competences and for counselling people with other mother tongues who are seeking advice. The contextual setting results in a process of counselling wherein specific topics and needs result in particular chal-lenges both for clients and their counsellors. In several European countries, the qualification of career guidance and counselling professionals is the subject of dedicated academic curricula. In these academic curricula however there are traditionally no specific modules that are preparing future counsellors for the specific needs of refugees. In addition, though in some countries in-service trainings for career counsellors from Public Employment Services are offered, there is still a lack of research-based courses that meet career counsellors’ needs.

CMinaR: Higher Education course and in-service training for counselling refugees and migrants

The CMinaR project developed and piloted evidence-based Higher Education courses that qualify future career counsellors for innovative career counselling and guidance for refugees and migrants. Additionally, we developed and piloted in-service trainings for career counselling practitioners working in Public Employment Agencies that equipped them with the knowledge, strategies and material to help them in their day-to-day practice with migrants and refugees. The Higher Education course and the in-service-training for career counsellors consist of six elaborated course units.

The development of the course built on a comprehensive analysis of the needs of the project’s target groups: lecturers, students, career counsellors. For the needs analysis the partners conducted qualitative questionings. Moreover, the development built on the outcomes of a comprehen-sive analysis of literature, media and resources in the project’s first phase.

The courses make use of a blended learning concept that brings together elements of face-to-face courses and training with ICT-based elements, such as a media centre, alongside an interactive learning environment to support the implementation of the courses. The media centre provides a variety of resources and material such as videos, worksheets and presentations. These materials and resources support the learning process and aim to be of practical use for the work of career counsellors with the project’s indirect target group of refugees and migrants.

The project’s web portal acts as a gateway and front-end for the media centre. Having developed the course and the media centre in the project’s second phase, the project’s third phase focused on the piloting and implementation of the courses in the partner countries.

The CMinaR partnership: Experts in the field from key countries affected by the refugee influx

The CMinaR project aimed to tackle the challenge of integrating refugees and migrants into the labour market by bringing together experienced partners from countries that are amongst the most affected by, and that play a key role for refugees’ integration – Germany, Italy, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The majority of European states are aware that national solutions to individual challenges cannot be very effective. In this situation, CMinaR now presents a European-coordinated teaching concept for vocational counsellors that can help to tackle a core task of inte-grating refugees. It forms the base for qualifying career counsellors and future counsellors to re-flect a transnational, European perspective and meet the target groups’ needs.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 425695,59 Eur

Project Coordinator

HOCHSCHULE DER BUNDESAGENTUR FUER ARBEIT & Country: DE

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA
• CANTERBURY CHRIST CHURCH UNIVERSITY LTD
• KAUNO TECHNOLOGIJOS UNIVERSITETAS
• STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET
• ISTANBUL TEKNIK UNIVERSITESI