Migration and Skills. The Experience of Migrant Workers from Albania, Egypt, Moldova, and Tunisia.
Jesús Alquézar Sabadie, Johanna Avato, Ummuhan Bardak, Francesco Panzica, and Natalia Popova

The subject of migration, and how best to manage it, has been moving up the policy agenda of the European Union for some time now. Faced with an aging population, possible skills shortages at all skills levels, and the need to compete for highly skilled migrants with countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United States, the EU is moving from seeing migration as a problem or a threat to viewing it as an opportunity.
As an EU agency promoting skills and human capital development in transition and developing countries, the ETF wished to explore the impact of migration on skills development, with a special emphasis on diasporas and returning migrants.1 For the World Bank, the issue of migration forms an integral part of its approach to social protection, since it believes that labor-market policy must take into account the national as well the international dimensions of skilled labor mobility. Both institutions were keen to look at what changes need to be made to migration policy in order to achieve a triple-win situation, one that can benefit both sending and receiving countries as well as the migrants themselves.
This report aims to unravel the complex relationship between migration and skills development. It paints a precise picture of potential and returning migrants from four very different countries—Albania, the Arab Republic of Egypt, Moldova, and Tunisia—that is a conscious choice of two “traditional” (Egypt, Tunisia) and two “new” (Albania, Moldova) sending countries, and describes the skills they possess and the impact that the experience of migration has on their skills development. By doing so, it aims to promote a better understanding of the phenomenon of migration and the human faces behind it—who they are and what they can offer, to the countries to which they migrate and to their countries of origin when they return.