Executive summary
While Flanders has a long history of providing a home for migrants, its immigrant population remains modest in international comparison. Approximately 14% of the population is foreign-born, and an additional 10% are native-born with at least one foreign-born parent; both figures are close to the OECD average. However, growth in the immigrant population over the past decade has been among the fastest in the EU. A particular challenge arises from the high proportion of non-EU-born migrants with primary education or less, with one in five among the highest in the EU.
Over the last decade, labour market outcomes for immigrants in Flanders have improved. Yet, these labour market outcomes continue to be unfavourable in international comparison. Migrants from outside the EU have some of the lowest employment rates and widest employment gaps within the EU, mainly due to the challenges non-EU-born women face.
Against this backdrop, Flanders invests substantially in integrating newly arrived migrants during their initial years of settlement. The cornerstone of these efforts is the civic integration programme. Consisting of four “pillars” (Dutch language training, civic orientation, a trajectory to work, and a network and participation trajectory), the programme stands out as one of the most elaborate instruments in the OECD outside the Nordics. Nonetheless, several challenges persist. Despite the programme’s emphasis on language learning, language outcomes remain unsatisfactory. Migrants with insufficient language skills face limited opportunities for further improve their skills upon completion. In addition, the heavy focus on academic curricula and limited scope for non-formal language learning has often led to long civic integration pathways, protracting the time spent outside the labour market. Blocked from access to further support by poor language skills, many of Flanders’ most vulnerable migrants struggle to enter the labour market, particularly low-educated and women. Two years after starting civic integration, only 36% of the low-educated men and 17% of the low-educated women were employed. After five years, these figures increase to 53% and 27%, respectively.
In reaction to these shortcomings, Flanders has taken significant steps to reform the integration system in recent years. The more substantial involvement of the Flemish PES at early stages has the potential to put an end to the early separation between the active and the inactive in integration activities and helps ensuring that all integration training is geared towards labour market entry. Other reforms include the further heightening of language learning expectations and a stronger focus on civic integration pathways that build on parallel participation in various forms of integration training. The network and participation pillar is rather unique in the OECD and may help newly arrived migrants to develop language skills outside classroom training. However, the ambitious changes require careful monitoring and evaluation to ensure that no new bottlenecks arise. Integrated approaches, for example, are far from evident in practice, as they require more structured co-ordination among the wide range of actors involved in integration activities than is currently the case. Flanders recently took steps towards more effective co-operation and co-ordination including through promoting data sharing and monitoring of integration outcomes, as well as strengthening the capacity of local integration policies. It is important to continue along these lines.
Going forward, one of the main challenges will be ensuring that Flanders’ emphasis on rapid labour market entry does not conflict with the goal of sustainable employment. Established migrant groups often struggle to integrate and have become quite distant from the labour force. Notably, the employment of settled refugees and female family migrants remains at low levels, also when outcomes are compared to those of other countries such as Norway and Sweden. This suggests that sustainability of employment is a challenge in Flanders, and upskilling is an essential element in addressing this.
What is more, low-educated newcomers receive very little formal education when the civic integration programme ends. Additional support is largely confined to short-term employment-oriented training run by the public employment service. The limited attention to upskilling stands in contrast with other OECD countries, notably in the Nordics, where migrants who arrive with low levels of education are encouraged or even required to pursue domestic formal education during their early integration trajectory. Given the low education levels of many new arrivals, incorporating remedial education as a component of integration services, next to language learning, would therefore be an important addition to the Flemish system.
Not only low-educated immigrants face challenges integrating into the Flemish labour market. Employment gaps vis-à-vis the native-born are most significant for high-educated immigrants, particularly for those who received their training abroad. The Flemish system for recognising foreign qualifications is advanced and has recently undergone significant changes to streamline the process and enhance transparency. Still, relatively few migrants obtain recognition of their foreign qualifications, suggesting that further improvement is needed. The validation of informal and non-formal learning is an important complement to assessing formal qualifications in Flanders, yet the numbers involved remain small, partly due to limited awareness and lack of targeted support for migrants.
Migrant women merit particular attention, as their employment levels remain well below those of men many years after settlement, especially if they have young children. Flanders stands out with a high share of non-EU migrant women who are not active in the labour market, pointing to the need for more systematic follow-up coupled with targeted second chance offers. Alongside this, policies that help parents balance work and family life, including parental leave and formal childcare, should be made more accessible for migrant mothers.
In addition to upskilling and certification of skills, policy makers have also tried to lower the cost of hiring through wage subsidies. While such programmes have proven effective in integrating migrant job seekers elsewhere in the OECD, they are not a target group in Flanders and a stronger targeting of migrants is warranted. A key sector for wage subsidies is the domestic household services sector, where Flanders has a comprehensive service voucher scheme in place. Although this scheme gradually became an important employer of migrant women, the system largely fails to offer passage to non-subsidised work, trapping many migrant women with medium and high levels of education in overqualified work. To boost the scheme’s stepping stone possibilities, continued vocational and language training should be provided to migrant domestic workers.
Discrimination is a further obstacle to immigrants’ integration in Flanders, despite a relatively strong and longstanding legal anti-discrimination framework. To tackle labour market discrimination more effectively, Flanders is executing sectoral action plans. Still, discrimination is hard to tackle through legal measures, and more proactive diversity tools are needed. In light of this, it is unfortunate that previous diversity plans were replaced with a less targeted “Focus on Talent” policy, despite favourable evaluation.
Another group that faces persistent disadvantages are native-born youth with migrant parents. On many indicators, they fare worse in Flanders than in other European OECD countries. More efforts are needed to facilitate their labour market entry and early career development, including through extensive second chance and mentorship programmes. Alongside this, employment in the public sector of native-born immigrant offspring should be more actively promoted.
In conclusion, while the integration framework for new arrivals in Flanders is well developed, this is less the case for longstanding immigrants and their offspring. Given their persistently poor outcomes in the Flemish education system and labour market, a comprehensive and co-ordinated set of actions should be considered.