Labour migration is a tool to address growing skills and labour shortages, widening the talent pool from which employers can recruit and enabling them to access new skills and ideas. Skills mobility partnerships (SMPs) and related concepts, including Global Skill Partnerships and Talent Partnerships, have gained momentum as a strategy to combine skills development, mobility, and mutual benefit for destination and origin countries. To explore governmental initiatives at the intersection of mobility and skills, the Link4Skills project conducted a mapping of SMPs that have been operating in the past ten years, based on desk research. This working paper presents the resulting Partnership Inventory, including a brief comparative analysis. The inventory aims to provide an overview of existing SMPs to help policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders to better understand existing government approaches.
Released 28.04.2026
Released 18.09.2025
Development actors are well suited to play a meaningful role in scaling up complementary labour pathways for refugees, yet their current contribution falls far below its potential. Exploring how development actors can engage to support refugee labour mobility is a worthwhile endeavour that can help increase the size, scope, and sustainability of these pathways.
Released 19.05.2025
The EU has promoted the creation of the Talent Pool as a key tool for addressing skill shortages across the Union. With its adoption expected soon, the question remains: Will Member States, employers, and jobseekers actively engage with it? This commentary outlines five concrete ways to increase the Talent Pool’s added value and, by extension, the likelihood that it will meet its talent attraction and retention objectives.
Released 28.11.2024
With another academic year underway, talent stakeholders should already be thinking about how they can convince this year’s graduates, and international students more broadly, to stay and take up in-demand jobs. Universities, employers, local economic development actors, and governments all have a role to play in facilitating the move from the classroom to the workplace – and they should engage, together, sooner rather than later.