1. Assessment and recommendations for immigrant integration in Flanders
This chapter synthesises key policy issues and recommendations identified in the main areas covered by the OECD review: the context for integration in Flanders; integration efforts for new arrivals; developing, activating, and using migrant skills in the labour market; strengthening the demand for migrant skills; and integrating youth with migrant parents.
Despite its long history of providing a home for migrants, Flanders’ population of immigrants and their offspring is not particularly large in international comparison. Close to 14% of the Flemish population are born abroad and a further 10% of the native-born have at least one foreign-born parent; both these figures are close to the OECD average. However, growth in the population of immigrants and their native-born children over the past decade has been among the fastest in the EU, outpacing that of the Netherlands, France and Germany, as well as Belgium as a whole.
The foreign-born in Flanders come from an increasingly diverse range of countries and different migration categories and bring with them a concomitantly wide range of integration needs. Free mobility has accounted for the bulk (60%) of permanent new arrivals to Flanders over the past decade, with the Netherlands, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria as the most important origin countries. Immigrants from North Africa (mainly Morocco) and Türkiye are historically large non-EU immigrant groups in Flanders, yet inflows from Morocco and Türkiye have largely stabilised over the past decade. In contrast, immigration from Asia (top countries include Afghanistan, Syria, India and Iraq), sub-Sahara Africa (top countries include Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Cameroon and Ghana) and Latin America (mainly Brazil) surged. Most permanent migrants born outside the EU arrived either for family (48%) or for humanitarian reasons (39%). Despite being on the rise, the relative importance of permanent migration from non-EU countries for work-related reasons (10%) remains limited in Flanders compared to other European OECD countries.
Four out of ten immigrants living in Flanders are born in another EU country, a large proportion in international comparison. The non-EU immigrant population, however, grew slightly faster over the past decade than the EU immigrant population; a trend which because of demographic factors is expected to intensify.
It was not until 1990 that the number of asylum seekers became important in Belgium and Flanders. Asylum applications have peaked particularly throughout the 1990s, the early 2000s and – more recently – in 2011, 2015 and 2022. Over the last decade, the main countries of origin were Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Guinea and Eritrea. In peak years, Belgium received disproportionately higher inflows compared to many other EU countries and – due to a sharp increase in the number of asylum requests in recent years – Belgium is again moving up the list of EU countries taking in the most asylum applicants in relative terms (position 8 in 2021). The Flemish authorities have been grappling with the implications of these elevated numbers, both in terms of meeting the immediate needs regarding the handling time for asylum applications, reception, and housing, and in terms of sustainable integration into the labour market and society. This strain is set to continue in the years to come as these large numbers of new arrivals make their way along the integration path.
Integration challenges are further intensified by the more than 60 000 Ukrainian refugees who applied for temporary protection in Belgium during 2022 (of whom over 60% have settled in Flanders). In relative terms, the inflow of Ukrainian refugees in Belgium so far is similar to countries like the Netherlands and Sweden, though well below that observed in Central and Eastern European countries.
Moderate but sustained economic growth in recent years, amidst a tight labour market, seems to have finally created the conditions that led to a catch-up of the foreign-born in the Flemish labour market. Between 2016 and 2021, the employment gap of the foreign-born vis-à-vis the native-born decreased from 14 to 10 percentage points. The unemployment gap nearly halved over the same period; from 8.3 to 4.5 percentage points. Few European OECD countries experienced a similar improvement.
However, labour market outcomes in Flanders continue to vary widely by migrants’ region of origin and gender. While employment outcomes of EU-born migrants outstrip (for men) or broadly match (for women) those of their native-born counterparts, employment outcomes of non-EU-born migrants remain among the lowest in the EU/OECD, primarily because of weak outcomes and limited progress among non-EU-born women. While Flanders’ position regarding employment outcomes of non-EU-born men is now around the average of European OECD countries, employment outcomes among non-EU-born women remain very worrisome, with one of the widest employment gaps vis-à-vis native-born women in OECD-Europe (27 percentage points). Moreover, the COVID-19 recession’s negative impact on the employment status of migrant women serves as a reminder that the progress accomplished in Flanders in recent years is fragile and should not be taken for granted.
As elsewhere, immigrants who migrated for humanitarian reasons face more hurdles in the Flemish labour market than other migrant groups. Their employment rate stands at 50%, lagging 32 and 9 percentage points behind those who migrated for work or family reasons, respectively. As the number of asylum seekers and refugees in Flanders continues to grow, efforts to improve their labour market integration is thus becoming an increasingly pressing concern.
The educational attainment of migrants born outside the EU is not favourable in international comparison, even though the education level of more recent arrival cohorts has been increasing. Almost four in ten non-EU-born immigrants hold at most a lower secondary education, which is more than twice the share among the native-born. A particular challenge is the high proportion of non-EU-born migrants with no more than a primary level of education, with 20% among the highest in the EU. The share of highly educated non-EU-born migrants is also well below the EU average, and the gap vis-à-vis the native-born particularly pronounced. What is more, close to six out of ten of upper-secondary and tertiary educated immigrants born outside the EU in Flanders had obtained their qualifications abroad, which is a significantly higher proportion than in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and France.
Flanders is among the OECD countries where employment chances differ most by educational attainment. High entry wages (due to high levels of collective bargaining) and relatively knowledge-intensive production processes have meant that there are few jobs for people with low levels of education. In fact, the employment rate for native-born people with low levels of education is among the lowest in the EU (52%), and it is even lower for immigrants born outside the EU (45%). Still, the employment gap between non-EU-born immigrants and the native-born is higher for those with high levels of education (15 percentage points) than for those with low levels (7 percentage points), which indicates the difficulty for highly educated immigrants to transfer the human capital acquired in their home country to the Flemish labour market. Indeed, close to all OECD labour markets discount foreign tertiary degrees, and the Flemish labour market is no exception. The employment gap between highly educated immigrants educated in the host country and those educated abroad is 11 percentage points in Flanders, and it rises to 18 percentage points for non-EU migrants with foreign qualifications. However, other types of Flemish-specific human and cultural capital, including host country language proficiency, are also essential for labour market insertion given that highly educated immigrants who received their training in the host country still experience significant employment gaps with the native-born.
Over the past two decades, Flanders’ approach to early integration services has developed into an integrated, well-balanced set of policy instruments that is among the most elaborate in the OECD area. The cornerstone of these efforts is the civic integration programme, which aims to help newly arrived migrants integrate into the Flemish labour market and society at large. The primary components of the civic integration programme are Dutch language training (and for those that need it, literacy training), civic orientation, a trajectory to work, and – from 2023 onwards – a network and participation trajectory to promote social integration. In practice, integration training has placed a heavy emphasis on language learning. In response to diverse educational backgrounds and literacy levels among newly arrived migrants, language learning paths in Flanders are heavily tailored to different starting points. Based on an initial assessment, language instruction is adapted to prior education and measured language aptitude. The civic integration programme’s attainment target, on the other hand, is fixed for all participants at level A2 in the Common European Reference Framework for Languages, with exemptions for low-literate newcomers.
As the Dutch language is not widely spoken worldwide, language training needs in Flanders are more extensive and long-term than in many other European OECD countries. In fact, in Flanders, close to eight in ten non-EU immigrants had hardly or no proficiency in the host-country language before migrating. Only Finland, Sweden and Norway have even higher shares. At the same time, the civic integration programme in Flanders is offered to all newly arrived migrants with a permanent perspective of stay (including EU migrants), and not just to refugees and their accompanying family as in many other OECD countries. As a result, close to seven in ten non-EU-born migrants at some point participate in publicly funded language training, which is among the highest participation rates in the EU, only topped by Denmark, Finland, Norway and Luxembourg. Still, despite modularised and flexible language training offers and high participation, the available evidence suggests that, in the past, formal language training has not resulted in high levels of formal Dutch language proficiency among newcomers in Flanders. Three years after having settled, only six out of ten integration participants achieved the target grade of A2. Less than one in five attained a level B1, which is often the required level for entry into adult education. In addition, the heavy focus on academic curricula and the limited scope for incorporating informal and non-formal language learning has led to sometimes long civic integration pathways. Participants who take up slower-paced language training at the Centres for Adult Basic Education, for example, need on average 31 months to finish the civic integration track.
Language skills are central to the success of integration across OECD countries. Strong language skills facilitate not only access to employment, but also access to education, to social interactions and, hence, to further acquisition of language skills. Conversely, poor language skills can leave migrants isolated and their integration path blocked. This is true everywhere, but the available evidence suggests that the importance of language skills is particularly strong in the Flemish labour market. The share of non-EU-born migrants who reported that the lack of host country language skills was the main obstacle to getting a suitable job is, with 16%, among the highest in the EU. What is more, employers in Flanders have rather stringent language requirements, as evidenced by the fact that eight of ten vacancies published with the PES request a (very) good level of Dutch language skills.
Furthermore, immigrants’ access to citizenship and social provisions (such as social housing) depends on their Dutch skills. A certain level of Dutch language knowledge is also the starting point for many other integration support measures, such as the admission for a vocational training or educational programme. As a result, migrants whose language skills remain poor at the end of the integration training, or whose skills have eroded following the end of training, have few options available to them when it comes to reskilling. Thus, for some migrants, failure to progress in their language skills by the end of integration training compromises their ability to continue their integration pathway.
Overall, higher Dutch language skills are strongly correlated with employment in Flanders. On average, civic integration participants who formally attained an A1 certificate three years after settlement have a predicted employment probability of 41% five years after settlement, whereas predicted employment levels increase to 50% for A2 holders, and to 56% for those with skills at level B1 or higher. However, the employment premium for higher language skills differs significantly across migrant groups. Migrant women experienced a stronger employment return when moving from A1 to A2, whereas moving from A2 to B1 and above brings about a higher return for men. Achieving higher Dutch language skills is also more beneficial for migrants who were younger at arrival, migrants with higher levels of education, and those who migrated to Flanders for work or study reasons compared with those who migrated for family or humanitarian reasons.
Flanders invests substantially in the integration of newly arrived migrants during their first years of settlement – in terms of language abilities and knowledge of the Flemish labour market and wider society. After the successful completion of the civic integration track, migrants can either search for and enter employment, enrol in additional language and vocational training, or pursue further education. These additional services are not managed by the integration agencies but instead are provided by mainstream policies and services. Integration support for migrants at this point is mostly untargeted.
However, the actual integration pathway for new arrivals is frequently much longer than two to three years. Especially migrants with low levels of education and migrant women continue to have specific needs after this period. Two years after having started the civic integration track, only 36% of the low-educated men and 17% of the low-educated women were in employment. After five years, these figures increase to 53% and 27%, respectively. Longer-term and more flexible integration pathways are hence needed, especially for the low-educated, who often require – in addition to language training – remedial education to build the basic skills necessary to function in Flemish society.
To address shortcomings of the civic integration programme, the Flemish integration system is currently undergoing substantial changes.
First, a third pillar of the civic integration programme, introduced in March 2022, obliges all non-working integration participants to register with the public employment services (PES) within two months after signing their integration contract. This reform is expected to put an end to the early separation between the active and the inactive in integration activities and help ensure that all integration training is geared towards labour market entry. This will be particularly beneficial for migrant women and low-educated migrants who – before the reform – were less likely than their counterparts to register with the PES and engage in activation measures. However, going forward, it will be important that the PES closely monitors the effects of the compulsory registration on migrants’ employment outcomes. As the registration with the PES comes relatively early in the integration trajectory (after two months), many migrants will still have limited Dutch language proficiency, creating a gap between the standard level of Dutch used by the PES in its communication (at least level B1) and newcomers’ language skills. What is more, many of the PES training measures require at least a basic level of Dutch, which implies that labour market activities for newcomers with weaker language skills may be put on hold. In such cases, obligatory registration with the PES may erode the enthusiasm and motivation of newcomers to engage in job search activities and support via the PES, jeopardising their integration process.
Second, language learning expectations are further heightened. From March 2022 onwards, newcomers who are obliged to participate in the civic integration programme need to prove that they independently attained oral Dutch language skills at level B1 within two years after having finished the civic integration track. Only those with limited learning capacities and those who can prove stable employment or education will be exempted from the new requirement. Strengthening newcomers’ Dutch language proficiency is highly relevant in the Flemish context, where language skills are essential for integration into the labour market and wider society. However, few OECD countries oblige immigrants to reach a B1 level or above so shortly after arrival. Comparing previously achieved levels of language competence in Flanders to the newly required level also highlights the ambition of the reform. The likelihood to achieve a B1 level five years after arrival has in the past ranged from 18% for low-educated participants to 30% for high-educated participants. It thus seems that few participants will be able to meet this new target and the impact of the new policy should therefore be closely monitored.
Third, from September 2023 onwards, language and civic orientation training in Flanders will no longer be free of charge. Participants will have to pay a fee of EUR 90 each for the civic orientation course and test and the Dutch L2 course and test (EUR 360 in total). However, most migrants who are eligible to participate in the programme – including EU migrants – will be exempt from payment, to prevent that the introduction of fees diminishes their motivation to voluntarily participate in integration training (which was already following a downward trend).
In the last couple of years, Flanders has taken significant steps to reform the integration system and to increase the efficiency of early integration training. There remain, however, some important challenges within the system that will need to be addressed to ensure that all migrants are able to find a pathway to the labour market.
OECD countries are increasingly moving towards integrated approaches, through parallel participation in various forms of integration training, to speed up the integration process of newly arrived migrants and to ensure transition to employment or mainstream services by reducing so-called lock-in effects of overly long participation in a particular training element, such as language training. Flanders is increasingly moving in this direction too, which is important given that the available evidence shows that in the past, civic integration trajectories were still mostly sequential (first civic orientation, then Dutch language training, and only then participation in PES training measures). Such linear trajectories increase the time that migrants spent outside the labour market, damaging their prospects for future employment. A stronger focus on pathways in which language training, civic orientation and PES training are integrated (with the content being aligned) or combined (run in parallel, without the content being aligned) will further strengthen early integration services in Flanders.
In practice, such integrated approaches are far from evident, as they require much stronger and more structured co-ordination among the multiple actors involved in the provision of integration activities (integration agencies, public employment service, municipalities, the public social welfare centres, adult education institutions). However, while co-operation agreements in Flanders have established guidelines for counselling and referral of clients, communication between actors often leaves much to be desired. This sometimes results in inefficiencies because counsellors start the intake with the newcomer from scratch rather than building off the prior work of another actor. Due to the wide range of actors involved, new arrivals can easily lose track of whom they can best contact for which issue. The degree of communication and co-ordination among key players in the integration process also varies significantly across cities and municipalities. In local settings where different agencies face conflicts of interest and lack channels of communication, the integration of immigrants – particularly disadvantaged groups such as refugees and non-EU immigrant women – appears to be less successful.
A significant barrier regarding co-ordination issues is that the different actors currently lack systematic access to individual-level data on the (prior) integration and labour market activities of the newcomer. While basic information (on the initial assessment and integration contract) is already shared, this is not yet the case for more specific data on the duration and outcomes of the various activities. A more systematic approach to integration data collection and sharing should be considered, and the recent co-operation agreements seem to move in that direction, amongst others by constructing a more efficient tool for data exchange.
Data and research on integration in Flanders is well developed in international comparison. This is mainly due to high-quality linked administrative register data. However, these data are difficult to access and thus still rarely used. It seems highly appropriate to proceed with a structural integration of these data infrastructures in the short term, and to work towards an administrative socio-economic panel that would enable a continuous monitoring of integration outcomes and evaluation of policy interventions.
Furthermore, a more harmonised approach to the registration of data on the outcomes of integration training (notably Dutch as a second language training) in the Crossroads Bank for Civic Integration would facilitate a clearer evaluation of the impact of integration interventions while, at the same time, easing identification of those needing further integration support.
In Flanders, the government does not provide initial housing, and new arrivals must therefore look for accommodation by themselves. Unlike countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, where newly arrived migrants are allowed to apply for social housing immediately or after completing an integration and language test, Flanders reserves social housing for residents who have resided in a municipality for five consecutive years within a period of ten years. Newcomers must therefore search for an affordable place to rent in the already oversaturated private rental housing market. Due to the lack of cheap rental accommodation, limited social networks and discrimination by landlords and real estate brokers, housing pathways of recently arrived migrants – refugees in particular – are highly challenging. In this context, more attention needs to be given notably to the quality, distribution, and accessibility of housing for immigrants – both new arrivals and settled migrants. This is a much-underappreciated policy area in the Flemish integration system, although it is also particularly difficult to tackle, especially because the social housing stock is small. Apart from the levers associated with social housing, addressing discrimination in the housing market also remains a critical area for policy action.
Early contact with the labour market is important to set new arrivals on a positive integration pathway and accordingly, Flemish integration policy increasingly aims for a fast transition of new arrivals into the labour market. However, there can be a trade-off between rapid and sustainable labour market integration, especially in a relatively high-skilled labour market such as the Flemish one. Administrative data shows that established migrant groups in Flanders are often struggling to integrate and have become quite distant from the labour force. Notably, the employment of long-term 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. While the employment rate of refugees in Flanders compares quite favourably in the early years of settlement, after about five to six years, refugees’ employment rates level off and integration comes to halt at low levels of employment, particularly for refugee women (35%). The decline in employment outcomes of refugees and their families in Flanders is stronger than what is observed in Norway and Sweden, suggesting that sustainability of employment is an issue in Flanders. Upskilling and job quality are important elements in addressing this.
Contrary to several other OECD countries, including the Netherlands and France, contact with the PES is by far the most important job search method among unemployed migrant jobseekers in Flanders. Next to its role as a link between jobseekers and employers, the PES offers a wide range of training programmes that help the unemployed gain a foothold in the Flemish labour market. However, both immigrant jobseekers and their native-born offspring are less likely to participate in training programmes that are most effective for them. As in other countries, workplace training – which has the strongest and most direct link to the labour market – generates a higher return in terms of entering (stable) employment for jobseekers. However, uptake of occupation-specific and workplace training is higher, and uptake of general classroom training is lower among jobseekers with native-born parents, compared to jobseekers with foreign-born parents.
It is not entirely clear what is driving this result, but the intervention of PES caseworkers who assign job seekers to different training options appears to be essential. Other factors are that immigrant job seekers and their offspring more often lack the necessary language skills and have lower levels of schooling and working experience. In the case of workplace training, the preference of employers is also important. There may thus be a case for better (indirect) targeting such instruments to jobseekers with migrant parents, to make sure that they benefit more from the measures that work best.
Vocational language training is a promising tool to build work-related language skills and has proven to be a particularly effective labour market integration tool. However, while the PES offers a variety of vocational language training and support modules, the number of immigrants that benefits from such measures is still limited in Flanders. Overall, six years after arrival, only one in ten of the (former) integration participants take up some form of vocational language training and support with the PES. Moreover, participation in such training is highly conditional on having already developed Dutch language skills. Given the benefits associated with vocational language training, efforts should be made to increase participation.
The Flemish labour market assigns high value to formal domestic qualifications. However, despite their considerable needs, low-educated newcomers in Flanders receive almost no formal education when the civic integration programme comes to an end. Additional support is largely confined to short-term employment-oriented training run by the PES, and very few newly arrived migrants are currently directed to adult education for upskilling purposes. The result is that unemployed migrants lacking basic skills are often left without further options for upskilling or channeled into courses whose short duration is rarely suited to their needs. The limited attention for upskilling of new arrivals in Flanders stands in stark contrast with the policy in several other OECD countries, notably in the Nordic countries, where immigrants who arrive with low levels of education are frequently encouraged or even required to pursue domestic formal education during their early integration trajectory.
It is important that educational disparities are addressed early and effectively in the integration process to equip all new arrivals with the basic skills needed to be functional in the Flemish labour market and society. Therefore, immediate remedial support for migrants whose lack of qualifications excludes them from educational and labour market programmes should be built into the civic integration programme infrastructure and systematically available for those who need it. The incorporation of meaningful further adult education as a component of integration services, next to basic language learning, could be an important addition to the Flemish system. Such a reform would also reflect the acknowledgment of both the degree to which Flemish qualifications are beneficial to employment entry and stability for migrant jobseekers, and the degree to which many immigrants still have profound learning needs. If the civic integration programme is further expanded, there will be a considerable time investment required by new arrivals. Against this backdrop, it might be considered to introduce an individualised integration benefit for those obliged to participate, as is currently the case in Nordic countries.
Not only low-educated immigrants face challenges integrating into the Flemish labour market. In fact, the employment gap between the foreign-born and native-born populations with the same formal qualification level are most pronounced among the high-educated. Highly educated migrants often find their qualifications largely discounted in the Flemish labour market, as is evident from the high incidence of over-qualification. Evidence in this report suggests that recognition of foreign qualifications is an effective tool to accelerate the employment entry of highly educated migrant jobseekers in Flanders, although the effect is found to be quite modest. Still, relatively few highly educated immigrants obtain recognition of foreign qualifications: six years after settlement, one in four highly educated integration participants obtains recognition of their foreign qualifications (for those who migrated for humanitarian reasons, however, this share increases to 40%).
That notwithstanding, the recognition framework in Flanders is advanced, and recent changes at NARIC Flanders have helped to fasten and streamline the recognition process and increase public awareness of the recognition procedures. Still, qualitative research shows that many newly arrived migrants refrain from applying for recognition because the procedure is costly (mostly because of translation fees), opaque, and in some cases long and arduous. Particularly the procedure for the purpose of exercising a regulated profession can be long and difficult to navigate, as it involves a range of actors and authorities. Finally, employers play only a small, if any role, in formal assessment and recognition mechanisms for non-regulated professions. As a result, they have little understanding of the recognition procedures and may question the value of the certificate granted. These issues need to be addressed.
One way of tackling the challenges associated with the recognition of foreign qualifications and experience is to provide more possibilities for the validation of competences. Flanders has gradually established a framework for validation of informal and non-formal learning since the mid-2000s as part of its life-long learning strategy. The validation act of 2019 has further streamlined the policy. Although validation trajectories for ten different professional qualifications are offered by a wide range of actors, they remain very small-scale (639 individuals in 2022). What is more, the share of foreign-born candidates differs strongly between the professional bodies, ranging between 17% and 45%. It is not entirely clear why validation measures are not used more often, but the lack of familiarity with the offer among employers and jobseekers seems important. Additionally, anecdotal evidence points to long and demanding procedures.
Given that recognition of prior learning is frequently the only way for immigrants with little or no formal schooling to ascertain their professional skills, more efforts should be taken to increase awareness among all stakeholders, including employers and migrants, about the existing provisions and their benefits. A well-targeted publicity campaign can maximise the potential of the programme. The possibility of attaining professional qualifications through validation procedures should be systematically introduced during the early stages of the civic integration programme, and referral to the different services should form part of any initial skills mapping performed in integration training. Validation bodies should therefore intensify their co-operation with integration agencies and other third parties such as immigrant organisations. Efforts to disentangle the assessment of professional competencies from an assessment of the individual’s general language proficiency could also be instrumental in making the validation framework more valuable for the foreign-born. Where possible and appropriate, and qualification requirements permitting, special arrangements may include oral demonstrations in place of the written sections of the competence demonstration; additional time allocated during competence tests for the planning of tasks and written modules; and targeted support materials, such as plain language texts, pictures, drawings, models, and aids.
Conveying highly educated immigrants of the benefit of further education is also an essential component of the integration process. Many highly educated migrants would benefit from a faster-paced integration track which equips them rapidly with the advanced language and vocational skills required for higher-skilled employment. However, for immigrants whose foreign degree is never recognised or does not hold the same value in the host country, getting another degree in the host country can improve job prospects and reduce the risk of over-qualification. However, despite a good range of adult education options at different levels in Flanders, few highly educated migrants pursue formal domestic qualifications in the first years after arrival. Less than one in ten civic integration participants who arrived with a foreign academic bachelor or master’s degree obtains Flemish credentials within the first six years after settlement.
Many practical obstacles arise for newly arrived migrants wishing to follow formal education in Flanders. One of the most important obstacles is that the educational institutions have large autonomy in determining what level of Dutch or what certificates are required to be eligible to follow a specific educational programme. Course eligibility for this type of supported study is largely granted on a case-by-case basis, with former degrees and language proficiency (often at level B2) constituting the primary requirements. Institutions take these decisions independently from one another, often leading to untransparent admission procedures for newcomers. Ambiguity regarding the newcomer’s residency status and associated rights further hinder interactions between newcomers and higher education institutions. In addition, the various counsellors and caseworkers with whom newly arrived migrants interact during the first period after arrival frequently lack a thorough understanding of the educational options available to newcomers in Flanders. In the absence of tailored guidance, new arrivals often must contact the educational institutions themselves or consult general websites, some of which are only available in Dutch. Furthermore, for highly educated migrants who receive social assistance benefits, public centres for social welfare have incentives to resort to ‘quick’ activation strategies over encouraging enrolment in formal schooling. The language barrier is also a major obstacle. Within the framework of the civic integration programme, only language courses up to and including level A2 are publicly funded. However, since the required level of Dutch for starting a higher education programme is often situated at level B2 or C1, there is a gap in the financial support of newly arrived migrants. Bridging courses are particularly cost-effective options allowing immigrants to demonstrate their skills without meeting all the host-country’s job qualification requirements. Even though many of the universities and university colleges in Flanders have established such bridging programmes on their own, adequate funding, streamlined regulation, and an effective information and distribution of the offer are still lacking.
Migrant women need more time to integrate into the Flemish labour market than men, and their employment levels remain well below those of men even ten years after settlement. Women also experience more hurdles in the transition from targeted to mainstream labour market support and many become increasingly distant from the labour market. High inactivity among migrant women merits particular attention, with close to half of the non-EU-born women in Flanders not at work nor actively looking for a job, the highest share in OECD-Europe. The labour market attachment of migrant women is of particular concern, given that integration failures among female migrants that are left unaddressed risk leaving a lasting impact on the integration outcomes of their children.
The civic integration programme has to some extent been adapted to the needs of migrant women with a weak labour market attachment. However, the lack of systematic follow-up coupled with few targeted second chance offers leads to a situation in which immigrant women who are not actively seeking work upon arrival in Flanders may drift quite far from the labour market. What is more, they risk becoming isolated from Flemish society. Efforts to ensure that those women keep in touch with mainstream services and are continually engaged on a systematic basis need to be stepped up. Outreach for such second chance programmes will require innovative tools, given that the bulk of migrant women are inactive without social benefits, and thus hard to reach. Surveys suggest that family responsibilities, discrimination, and the lack of language and digital competencies are the most commonly perceived barriers to professional life for inactive immigrant women. Prior bad experiences in the labour market also appear to be an essential driver in the decision not to work. What is more, most of the economically inactive women were otherwise “active” in various ways, by taking care of their children or other people’s children, following a training or course, or doing voluntary work. This implies that the distance from the labour market can be addressed through appropriate out-reach tools coupled with other instruments such as training, job placements, and mentorship.
Effective activation also begins with an analysis of the reasons for inactivity. In Flanders, a relatively small share of the migrant women (12%) is involuntary inactive. As a reason for being economically inactive and not wanting to work, more than half of the migrant women cite family responsibilities, in contrast to native-born women for whom reasons such as illness and disability and education and training were more frequently cited. Migrant women thus seem to experience more difficulties in combining employment with care responsibilities, which is further stymied by the availability of family policy measures. To help parents balance work and family life, Flanders has extensive childcare support systems and parental leave policies in place. However, these family policies are heavily commodified. Regarding parental leave, eligibility requires continuous employment with the same employer for at least 12 months in the 15 months preceding the application. In formal childcare, childcare agencies often give preference to parents who are well established in the labour market and therefore have predictable demand for childcare, due to long waiting lists and the fact that they must guarantee minimal occupancy rates.
However, in Flanders as elsewhere, foreign-born women are much more often outside the labour market than native-born women and are therefore less likely to have had stable employment prior to having a child. As a result, such commodified family policies which heavily rely on stable employment for access, inadvertently give foreign-born women lower access and perpetuate the precarious integration of migrant women by implicitly creating more barriers to combining family formation with continued labour market participation. Access to family policies should be made less restrictive, to support migrant women with a low labour market attachment to combine motherhood with a job.
To tackle demand-side barriers to employment, Flanders has a long tradition of using wage subsidies for the employment of disadvantaged groups. Wage subsidies (or a reduction of social security contributions) are focused on employers who hire people from three disadvantaged groups: low-educated youth, jobseekers and workers aged 58 and above, and persons with an occupational disability. In contrast to other OECD countries such as the Nordic countries which also make heavy use of this tool, migrants are not specifically targeted. Indeed, migrant jobseekers are underrepresented among those who benefited from these policies in Flanders. For instance, only 23% of beneficiaries of the subsidy for low-educated youth had a foreign nationality, compared to 29% of the eligible non-users. Similarly, 35% of the users had no to little Dutch language skills, compared to 46% of the non-users. What is more, research shows that the wage subsidy for low-educated youth does not have a significant effect on the jobseekers’ employment outcomes, even though low-educated youngsters are a particularly vulnerable group in the Flemish labour market. Part of the explanation lies in the fact that the wage subsidy for low-educated youth frequently did not lead to durable employment, as individuals hired with such a subsidy had mostly brief periods of employment interspersed with non-employment. To which degree this is also the case for immigrants is unclear, however, and evidence from the Nordic countries suggests that the impact is often different and indeed higher for this group, as information asymmetries are large. This should be investigated for Flanders and, if a similar pattern holds, a stronger targeting to immigrants should be strongly considered.
A key sector for wage subsidies in Flanders is the non-care domestic household services sector. Since 2004, Flanders has a comprehensive system of social vouchers in place for this sector. This scheme is the largest subsidised domestic work scheme in the OECD and subsidises a restricted list of household services including cleaning, washing, and ironing, to create low-skilled jobs, reduce informal sector activities and improve the work-life balance of the users. Although the scheme does not have a specific focus on migrants, foreign-born women make up almost half of the approximately 100 000 employees working through service voucher companies.
Although the initial aim of the service voucher scheme was to create low-skilled jobs that could provide a leverage to other jobs, the system largely fails to offer passage to non-subsidised work, despite many migrant women working in this system having medium and high levels of education. One in seven of the non-EU-born women working in the scheme are highly educated, compared to one in ten of the EU-born women, and one in 30 of the native-born women. Many migrant women with high levels of education seem to get trapped in the scheme and in domestic work for which they are overqualified. There seems to be scope for providing continued vocational and language training to migrant domestic workers, in co-operation with the registered companies concerned, to increase the scheme’s steppingstone possibilities.
Another channel of activation is to support self-employed immigrants. Compared to other European OECD countries, Flanders has a relatively high self-employment rate among the native-born and EU-born migrants, whereas the proportion of self-employed among non-EU-born migrants is relatively low. Nevertheless, the share of immigrants in the self-employed population rose from 10% to 15% between 2010 and 2020. There are several positive aspects to immigrants becoming self-employed or setting up their own businesses. Self-employment can be a particularly effective pathway into the labour market for migrants who experience difficulties in taking up salaried employment. In addition, migrant business owners can be an important role model and a potential employer for other (often migrant) workers. Still, immigrant self-employment is no panacea for labour market integration. Many of the foreign-born self-employed in Flanders (16% compared to 5% for the native-born) end up in self-employment due to involuntary reasons (i.e. out of necessity or because the employer requested it) and to escape from marginalisation in the labour market.
Self-employment thus seems to represent an important fallback strategy for immigrants to avoid unemployment, blocked mobility, and discrimination in the Flemish labour market. At the same time, research shows that immigrants in Flanders are more likely than the native-born to exit from self-employment into non-employment, and that weaker attachment to the labour market preceding entry into self-employment plays a crucial role in explaining why immigrants suffer from higher exit rates. In Flanders, tailored assistance to support immigrants in self-employment is still relatively limited. More structured and targeted support should be considered to make sure that businesses are viable, notably through better accompaniment in the business foundation and early functioning, including with training, counselling, and mentoring.
Mentorship is well developed in Flanders. Different actors (NGOs, public bodies, companies) have implemented mentoring projects on a relatively large scale in Flanders and these have proven rather cost-effective means of integration, in Flanders as elsewhere. Notably, the addition of a fourth pillar – a network and participation trajectory – to the civic integration programme starting in 2023 will structurally anchor mentorship in the Flemish integration system. The new pillar assigns 40 hours to strengthen immigrant’s social networks and Dutch language skills, with the exact details of the networking programme up to each municipality to design. Such a mandatory state-led participation scheme (for newcomers obliged to participate in the civic integration programme) is unique in the OECD, but it is also an ambitious undertaking. It puts considerable pressure on (smaller) municipalities, which need to design and offer such a programme despite in some cases limited expertise and experience. Clear guidelines on what the participation project should entail, including measures to follow-up and clear communication of expected funding for this task, would help municipalities in planning.
In Flanders, newly arrived migrants (especially those with high qualifications) often constitute the most important target group of mentoring initiatives in Flanders. However, given that many established migrant groups and native-born youth with migrant parents are struggling to integrate and, in some cases, have become quite distant from the labour force, it is key that mentoring of established migrants and their native-born offspring also receives more policy attention. Indeed, in most other countries, these groups are the main target group of mentorship initiatives.
Despite long experience in anti-discrimination legislation at the federal and regional level, both perceived and direct discrimination are prevalent in the Flemish labour market. From the perspective of immigrants themselves, the proportion of foreign-born individuals that feel discriminated against in Flanders is high in international comparison: 22% of working-age non-EU-born and 8% of EU-born migrants in Flanders consider themselves members of a group that is discriminated against. What is even more worrisome, perceived discrimination is also high among native-born youth with migrant parents in Flanders: almost one in four consider themselves as belonging to a group that is discriminated against; one of the highest shares in the OECD. In addition to the sentiment of discrimination (a self-reported measurement), field experiments in Flanders using fictitious applications with foreign-perceived names show that the actual incidence of discrimination is widespread, although some evidence suggests that this may have decreased recently.
To tackle labour market discrimination more effectively, the Flemish Government has recently developed an ambitious Action Plan in the framework of the sectoral covenants. Over the 2022-24 period, each of the sectors receives funding and guidance to take targeted action to combat discrimination in three subsequent phases. The first stage is a baseline measurement that includes a sector-specific risk analysis, an examination of the sociodemographic composition of the workforce and jobseeker population in the sector, and a testing stage that makes use of field experiments and fictitious applications to track the prevalence of discrimination on various grounds. Based on the baseline measurement, sectors should create focused anti-discrimination efforts during the second phase. Sectors should do a follow-up assessment during the last phase and, if necessary, modify the anti-discrimination measures. The plan is to communicate the findings of the first phase – the baseline measurement – by the end of 2023. It will be important to monitor and follow up on these findings, as currently foreseen.
While anti-discrimination legislation can have some effect on discrimination, more proactive measures to promote diversity are also necessary. In Flanders, such equal employment policies were traditionally more developed than elsewhere in the OECD through supply-driven career and diversity plans, targeted at small- and medium-sized companies. Companies that chose to implement a diversity plan had to set targets for the recruitment, internal mobility, training, or retention of migrants or other vulnerable groups. To achieve these targets, companies received free support from dedicated diversity consultants and subsidies to co-finance plan-related costs.
Despite positive evaluation and OECD work advising to further expand the career and diversity plans, this policy was replaced by a new “Focus on Talent’ policy. While the objective of the new policy is largely the same, the underlying policy vision and the tools to achieve it are not. Most importantly, there is no more active outreach to employers, and companies themselves must approach the services. This is a barrier notably for SMEs. The new policy emphasises individual competencies or talents and intendedly breaks with the previous policy focused on combating the under-representation of certain socio-demographic groups in the labour market. “Focus on Talent” has three parts or “tracks”: the activation of the unemployed and inactive population by the PES, the investment in employee training via the SME portfolio and sectoral covenants, and a bottom-up approach wherein various labour market actors (including diversity consultants) further develop and implement a talent- and competence-based mind switch. A recent evaluation has revealed that established consultation networks largely disappeared with the policy switch, and that many SMEs are not actively seeking support for diversity measures anymore. Indeed, the inclusion of general themes such as competence building among the overall workforce seems to have resulted in weaker attention to integration and diversity issues. Companies are also no longer required to report on their goals under the new policy, and evaluation of the programme now focuses solely on a macro-level monitoring of the labour market outcomes of vulnerable groups in Flanders.
The population of youth with migrant parents is rapidly increasing and diversifying in Flanders. More than a third of children aged below 15 in Flanders were either themselves foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent, up from one in four children one decade ago. The share of young people with migrant parents is relatively high in international comparison, and considerably higher than in France and in the Netherlands for example. Furthermore, growth in the population of youth with migrant parents over the past decade has been among the fastest in the OECD. Due to their young age distribution, most of the native-born children of migrant parents are still in the education system or have recently entered the Flemish labour market.
How well youth with migrant parents are integrated into the education system and the labour market is one of the best measures of the long-term success or failure of a country’s integration policy. As native-born children of immigrants have been raised and educated in the country, they should not, in theory, encounter the same difficulties as migrant adults who have often obtained their skills in a different context. In many European OECD countries, young people with migrant parents nevertheless face persistent disadvantages in the education system and labour market. Yet on many indicators, they fare worse in Flanders than in other countries. Nowhere in OECD-Europe is the tertiary education gap of native-born with migrant parents vis-à-vis native-born with native-born parents more pronounced than in Flanders. Only one in three native-born adults with migrant parents attain a tertiary education degree, compared to more than half of those with native-born parentage.
Entering the labour market also constitutes a challenge for native-born children with migrant parents in Flanders. Among those aged between 15 and 34, the employment rate of native-born children with migrant parents lags almost 24 percentage points behind children with native-born parents, for both genders. Again, Flanders’ performance falls far short of countries like Sweden and the Netherlands, where adult immigrants nevertheless face similar integration challenges. What is more, while the employment rate of young foreign-born adults in Flanders has shown a strong improvement over the past decade, that of native-born adults with migrant parents remained largely stable. As a result, the employment rate of native-born adults with migrant parents now lags 6 percentage points behind that of their foreign-born peers.
Youth with migrant parents face many challenges in the Flemish education system, and gaps in educational performance already manifest themselves at an early age. Despite improvement in some areas (notably early school leaving), the gap in school performance of youth with migrant parents vis-à-vis youth with native-born parents in Flanders has remained persistent over the last 15 years, in contrast to improvement seen elsewhere in the OECD. The reasons for this gap are manifold, but socio-economic background characteristics play a particularly important role in explaining why school performance among native-born children with migrant parents is lower, more so in Flanders than in other countries. This is at first sight surprising since, in contrast to many other European OECD countries, almost all native-born children with migrant parents participate in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), which is known to have an important impact on later education trajectories. What is more, several steps have been taken over the past years to support ECEC.
That notwithstanding, pre-primary schools have a lot of autonomy to implement their pedagogical projects and teaching strategies which leads to a great variety in support. What is more, ECEC institutions often face shortage of qualified teachers and in this context, the toddler/teacher ratio remains high although schools with more socially disadvantaged children are allocated more teaching periods. The recent introduction of the KOALA test, a standardised language screening which is obligatory in all schools for toddlers at the age of 5 is however expected to reinforce support to disadvantaged toddlers by providing systematic follow-up language support for those assessed to be in need. Going forward, providing language support in pre-primary schools will become more and more challenging in a context of increasing numbers of children with a home language other than Dutch (26% of the toddlers in 2021, up from 18% in 2011).
Under the Equal Educational Opportunity (EEO) policy, preschools, primary and secondary schools with relatively many “disadvantaged students” receive extra support (additional funding in preschools and primary education and mostly additional teaching hours in secondary education) to work in an integrated way towards a structural improvement of the educational opportunities of all their students. Several evaluations have shown that the EEO policy failed in reducing the gap between disadvantaged students and other students and did not lessen the strong correlation between students’ socio-economic background and home language on the one hand and school performance on the other. Several features help to explain the low impact of the policy. The low impact of the EEO policy seems to be partly due to the lack of specific objectives and standards for evaluation provided to all schools by the government. Little guidance is provided to schools by the government regarding how they should use the additional resources. It appears that school-specific actions based on the additional EEO resources are frequently not appropriately targeted. What is more, some evidence suggests that while the Flemish secondary education system is characterised by significant additional investment in schools with disadvantaged students in the form of additional teaching hours, teachers in such schools often tend to be significantly less experienced than those found elsewhere.
Early tracking and frequent down-streaming seem to disadvantage children of immigrants. In the Flemish secondary educational system, track choice (and therefore often school choice) plays a decisive role in the organisation of schooling. Although the first two years in secondary education are often presented as more or less comprehensive, in practice, there is a first tracking of students from the age of 12 onwards. Given the strong hierarchy in tracks (general-technical-vocational) thereafter, the Flemish educational system is also known for its frequent down-streaming. Mobility between the different tracks almost exclusively occurs downwards and once students end up in the vocational track, they can almost never climb up this hierarchy. What is more, students who speak at home a language other than Dutch are much more likely to end up in the least prestigious and desirable vocational track, with negative consequences for further educational careers and employment perspectives in the long run. In part, this is due to weaker performance in primary school, yet studies show that, even at given performance levels, school staff orient youth with migrant parents more often to lower-status tracks than their peers with native-born parents. At the same time, in the Flemish educational system, where freedom of choice and autonomy are structural features, information available to the parents is key. Migrant parents appear to be less aware of the importance of educational choices.
Partly due to the comprehensive tracking and high emphasis placed on autonomy and school choice, school segregation in Flanders is relatively high in international comparison. What is more, the school performance of native-born students with migrant parents in the top quartile of segregated schools largely lags behind that of their peers in the quartile of the least segregated schools. With a gap equivalent to almost two years of schooling at the age of 15, the differences are the largest in the OECD. Even after considering other factors such as the fact that students in segregated schools tend to have lower-educated mothers and do not speak Dutch at home, the gap is still more than the equivalent of one year of schooling.
In most OECD countries, young people who arrive in the country past the start of primary education face a higher risk of falling behind in the school system compared to their native-born peers and those who arrive at a younger age. To ensure that new arrivals have sufficient time to adapt to their new school environment and catch up with the demands of the new education system, Flanders has reception education (OKAN) in place, to teach newly arrived minors without any knowledge of the Dutch language the language of instruction as soon as possible and promote their integration into the Flemish secondary school system. The demand for reception education increased strongly in recent years and, in 2022, Flanders received a record number of newly arrived minors due to the large inflow of Ukrainian refugees. This situation is set in a context where secondary schools have few guidelines in how to organise reception education. Many schools have therefore developed their own classification approach. As typically very little is known about newly arrived students’ educational background and abilities, and few formal assessment tools are available to teachers to assist them in allocating newly arrived students to groups, the most important factor that is looked at when dividing the students is how quickly they are expected to learn Dutch. The fact that this classification is mainly based on non-standardised tests and teacher assessments which are designed unilaterally to gauge how quickly students learn Dutch, means that the potential of students who need more time to master the language of instruction is systematically underestimated. This helps to explain why the diverse group of OKAN students has a very homogeneous orientation towards the vocational track in mainstream secondary education. In addition, as OKAN mainly focuses on Dutch language acquisition, the set-up allows little to no time for classes in mathematics, science, English, French, and digital skills, despite these competencies being essential to enable a transition to the general or technical track.
The embeddedness of reception education in the educational system is also a challenge. Reception programmes often operate as an entity on their own, isolated from mainstream education, sometimes even physically. The responsibility to incorporate newly arrived migrant students in the educational system is almost solely assigned to reception education, generally without adjustments in the secondary education system itself. Few secondary schools have, for example, developed a clear language policy and structural accommodation for newly arrived migrant students, even though these could boost the students’ chances for succeeding, especially in the more academic tracks. Many children and youth are not prepared for immediate schooling when they arrive in Flanders. Some, especially refugee children and non-accompanied minors, need psychosocial support to overcome their difficulties before joining the educational system. Yet, initiatives on having psychological and social support for OKAN students are scarce in Flanders. Instead, OKAN-teachers must often deal with these vulnerable youth, in addition to their already high work pressure and fluctuating hours of support. This situation adds to the challenge of retaining qualified OKAN-teachers and results in high staff turnover.
Particularly challenging is the situation of students who arrive during their teenage years with little prior formal education, low literacy skills and learning difficulties. Students from that age have very low chances to succeed in a regular secondary school – even after a two-year OKAN training. However, simply staying longer in the reception programme is not a solution either. While targeted programmes exist for newcomers who have already turned 18, for youth between the ages of 13 and 15, these programmes are not an option, as they are still obliged to follow mandatory schooling. In addition, due to their young age, they are not able to start a dual apprenticeship yet. These youth are often falling through the cracks of the system and need targeted support.
Native-born youth (15-34 years old) with immigrant parents are twice as likely to be NEET as their peers with native-born parentage (24% vs. 12%). Nowhere in the EU are the absolute and relative differences as large as in Flanders. Differences in employment rates between the children of immigrants and the children of the native-born are also higher than in other OECD countries. Employment rates of immigrant offspring increase stronger with educational attainment than for native-born offspring, suggesting that much could be gained by improving the educational levels of the native-born children of immigrants.
However, other important factors than educational attainment also need to be tackled such as widening youth with migrant parents’ social and professional networks to smoothen their transition into the labour market and improve their opportunities in the job-search process. The recent reform of the Dual learning programme offers promising opportunities. However, without additional support, the most disadvantaged students, notably those lacking Dutch language and soft skills, may face difficulties accessing the first phase of this programme, which could increase their risk of early school leaving.
For those who fail, Flanders offers various but fragmented activation measures. One specificity of the Flemish system is that unemployed young adults who register for the first time to the PES are obliged to follow a professional integration period before they receive an unemployment benefit or until they find a job. This programme cannot however exceed one year and estimates show that native-born with foreign-born parents are less likely to be employed than other native-born at the end of this period.
The public sector accounts for a relatively large part of employment in Flanders. What is more, public sector employment of immigrants and their offspring generates several benefits. First, the presence of this group among civil servants enhances diversity within public institutions, making them more representative of the communities they serve. Second, how the wider public perceives immigrants and their children depends in part on their “visibility” in public life. Third, by employing immigrants and their descendants, the public sector should also be a role model for the private sector. However, for a variety of reasons – notably access restrictions for foreign nationals to certain parts of public administration and strict language and diploma requirements – immigrants and their native-born offspring are largely underrepresented in public sector employment in Flanders. While there are some targeted actions at the municipal level, more systematic action is needed, including through internship offers and targeted information campaigns.
While the integration framework for new arrivals is relatively well developed, this is less the case for more longer-standing immigrants and their native-born children. Given the current lack of systematic integration measures beyond new arrivals and the persistently poor outcomes of settled migrants and their children, a comprehensive and co-ordinated set of measures should be considered. Several OECD countries have reacted to this through targeted action plans. Such an Action Plan should inspire focused policy action and structural co-ordination among different stakeholders to get a holistic mapping of the needs and required actions for all immigrants and their children. In addition to the administration across and within levels of government, this should also involve employers, trade unions, and civil society actors.
Enhance early integration efforts
Make sure that the integration process starts during the asylum process for those with a high probability of being granted international protection. Reconsider the exclusion of asylum seekers to participate in the civic integration programme
Considering the increasing settlement delays, consider investing more in public housing and make social housing available to recently arrived migrants in need
Decrease the time that immigrants spend in the civic integration track by investing more in integrated and parallel integration training with a stronger employment focus
Ensure that all migrant mothers are aware of the custom-made civic integration trajectory that was designed for this group and consider opening the programme to migrant mothers with high literacy skills
Continue efforts to increase the digital skills of participants in the integration programme
Ensure that the digital civic orientation test represents no hurdle on the integration track for newcomers with low digital literacy skills
Increase outreach and encourage EU-born migrants to participate in the civic integration programme
Monitor the short- and longer-term effects of the introduction of fees for integration training, notably regarding its impact on participation
Support and encourage migrants with low and medium levels of education at arrival to invest in further domestic education in the context of the civic integration programme
Provide clear guidelines on what the fourth pillar (network and participation trajectory) should entail, including measures to follow-up and clear communication of expected funding for this task, to help municipalities in planning. Ensure that participation projects are sufficiently tailored to migrants’ individual needs
Improve co-ordination in integration efforts
Establish a comprehensive Action Plan for Integration in Flanders, involving all stakeholders, to co-ordinate actions and identify gaps – notably for settled migrants and children of immigrants
Involve adult education institutions more systematically in the design of the civic integration programme, especially for low-educated newcomers
Systematically track and exchange information between the stakeholders on integration and labour market activities undertaken
Involve the different integration actors more systematically in the design of the civic integration contract
Make sure that smaller municipalities have the capacity to respond to diverse integration needs
Facilitate experience sharing among municipalities and enhance guidance on measures along with minimum standard setting
Smoothen the transition from targeted to mainstream support
Acknowledge that the integration pathway for new arrivals lacking basic skills frequently exceeds two years, and structure integration measures accordingly to allow for a coherent and integrated approach including adult education and further education and training, and in combination with labour market introduction
Consider introducing an individualised integration benefit for those obliged to participate in an extended civic integration programme, as is currently the case in Nordic countries
Continue to reach out to women in a systematic way when the civic integration programme ends, to assess and address their additional needs
Invest more in parallel integration activities, combining language training with civic orientation and labour market activities
Monitor whether the B1 attainment target does not delay labour market entry and causes stress among migrants
Make sure that all new arrivals are not only registered with the PES but also accompanied in their labour market trajectory early on, through a dedicated PES counsellor and a personalised labour market integration plan, in co-ordination with the civic integration services
Support PES caseworkers to ensure that migrant-specific needs are not overlooked when assigning unemployed jobseekers to different activation measures
Enhance participation of immigrant jobseekers in the most effective activation measures, by ensuring that general classroom training is more frequently followed by occupation-specific classroom and workplace training
Make sure that Dutch language skill requirements do not prevent new arrivals from taking beneficial PES courses and make adaptations where necessary
Avoid that immigrants are excluded by employers in contractual workplace training by strengthening incentives to involve disadvantaged groups
Expand the uptake of training options in which working or vocational training is combined with Dutch language training and support
Consider providing basic information on PES activation measures in languages other than Dutch
Address the widespread difficulties faced by migrants in reaching the language threshold necessary to access further labour market training and education, including those outside the PES system
Ensure that incentives to boost the demand for migrant skills improve long-term integration
Monitor the impact of wage subsidies on immigrants and act on the results
Provide continuous education and language training to migrant women working in the service voucher scheme, to enhance their chances for upward mobility
Strengthen targeted support for immigrant business owners, notably by upgrading immigrants’ business and other skills through training, counselling, and mentoring
Increase mentoring initiatives for settled immigrants and their native-born offspring
Monitor the impact of the innovative sectoral anti-discrimination covenants and communicate and act on the results. If the results are positive, consider extension to other domains, including the housing market
Follow-up on innovative techniques like “open hiring” and anonymisation of CVs in the recruitment process, which are gaining attention and popularity as a means of preventing hiring discrimination
Monitor the impact of the Focus on Talent policy at the micro-level of businesses and ensure that diversity-related issues are given more weight in SME portfolio investments; consider reintroducing the previous diversity plans
Ensure that the skills of high-qualified migrants are appropriately recognised and valued
Improve co-ordination in the process of recognition of foreign qualifications, linked with a strengthening of certification of more practical competences and bridging offers
Increase the capacity of NARIC Flanders to ensure that the recent rise in the number of applications does not inflate the processing time of applications
Increase transparency and gather evidence on the procedure of applications for professional recognition at the various competent recognition bodies, as these are currently not systematically available
Explore the possibility to automatically transfer applications for recognition of qualifications for regulated professions from NARIC to the competent recognition bodies internally, after academic recognition
Expand the scale and scope of recognition of prior learning and validation tools that enable immigrants with informally acquired skills and work experience to get the equivalent of a domestic professional qualification
Systematically introduce the possibility of attaining professional qualifications validation during the early stages of civic integration
Enhance bridging courses for migrants, along with additional support in language learning
Ensure long-term labour market attachment of immigrants
Provide more targeted support for established migrants who lack basic skills
Reach out to and support migrant women with a low labour market attachment, including through a targeted “second chance” programme. Ideally, such a programme would also involve a co-operation with childcare and school systems to encourage participation of immigrant stay-at-home mothers
Make access to family policies such as parental leave and formal childcare less dependent on employment stability, to incite migrant women with a low labour market attachment to combine motherhood with a job
Strengthen efforts to offer equal educational opportunities to native-born children of immigrants
Strengthen language acquisition at early ages. To this end, make sure that the newly introduced language assessment at age 5 is systematically followed-up for those assessed to be in need
Link Ministry of Education and Training enrolment data with population register data to better understand the educational gap between native-born children of immigrants and children of native-born parents, notably by assessing the relative importance of language spoken at home as well as of parents’ country of birth.
Raise awareness of migrant parents with a low socio-economic profile regarding the importance of educational choices and help them better navigate into the school system
Support early school leavers who turned 18 by reinforcing the collaboration between Pupils’ Guidance and Adult Learning (Leerwinkels) Centres
Develop more systematic training and on-the-job training programmes for teachers in schools with a high share of socio-economically disadvantaged pupils and of non-Dutch speakers at home
Smoothen the integration of newcomers at school, including at a very young age
Monitor the outcomes of additional language support for newly arrived minors in preschools and primary schools and promote partnerships with reception classes in secondary schools
Facilitate the transition from the one-year reception class in secondary education to regular classes by offering faster and more flexible integration in regular education
Strengthen vocational offers to students when they finish reception classes, notably minors who are not entitled to follow part-time vocational education. A pilot programme, like the BENO programme for basic education after reception, should be considered to prepare youth within mainstream education for vocational education in a secondary school or workplace learning
Increase attention to education for new arrivals in initial teacher education and improve pedagogical preparation for reception teachers
Tackle the difficult transition from school to the labour market for children of immigrants
Make sure that insufficient Dutch language or soft skills do not prevent children of immigrants accessing the first phase of the new Dual Learning programme.
Follow-up students enrolled in dual apprenticeship by maintaining regular exchanges between employers and teachers
Strengthen the one-year professional integration period for youngsters who are still unemployed with targeted activation measures, including second chance and mentorship programmes
Promote employment in the public sector of native-born immigrant offspring
Tackle disadvantage in the labour market by promoting exchanges between students and employers (e.g. through job fairs and apprenticeships)