The issue of immigration and the integration of immigrants are high on the policy agenda of EU and OECD countries, both from an economic and a social point of view. The active participation of immigrants in the labour market and, more generally, in public life is vital for ensuring social cohesion in the host country and the ability of migrants to function as autonomous, productive and successful, self-realised citizens. It is also critical for facilitating their acceptance by the host-country population. But, why are some European economies and societies far more successful than others in integrating immigrants into their labour markets and why are they better in offering opportunities to young immigrants to unfold their talents and obtain qualifications ? Recent OECD research clearly made this point about large differences in the performance of European countries regarding integration and equal opportunities. In order to find Good Practices from several countries and to learn from each other about successful strategies, there will be meetings in all partner countries. The core-business is to shed the light on every participating country, to share good experiences and to clarify the national and regional interventions. The demonstrated examples, presentations and instruments will provide the participants with tools to improve their own policy and instruments. At the end of each meeting, every partner describes their learning results and whether the Good Practices could be used in their own country or not. A special reflection form will be developed for this purpose, allowing the partners to evaluate tools, interventions and methodologies along the same lines. These reflection forms from every partner per country will be gathered by the co-ordinating organisation MBO Raad and are input for the final report where countries present their learning outcomes of the projectmeetings and where, if possible, some general conclusions and recommendations will be made. Furthermore, towards the end of the project there will be two LTTA's for a larger group of stakeholders, including the associated partners in order to disseminate the lessons learnt. In general all partners will be represented by two persons at the meetings and the LTTA's, always covering on one hand the implementing partners (providers/schools, but also companies) and on the other hand decision makers on the political level. The envisaged LTTA's are focussing on a larger group of stakeholders, including the associated partners and other actors regarding the migration and integration policy , but always bearing in mind the group of policy makers, those who are in charge of the training implementation and the companies who need to take them finally on board. Special attention will be paid to the group of young adult asylum seekers/immigrants, as many talents within this group are wasted, among others due to their change of status if they reach the age of 18, whilst minors are better protected by international laws. This is a problem, that was emphasized by all partners from the different countries. Research also shows, that many young migrants make wrong choices as result of a lack of information and guidance. Rather often they are not aware of the possibilities (and the roads to go) in their new countries. In this respect, the project is trying to act in line with some key messages from the CEDEFOP working paper 'Valuing diversity; guidance for labour market integration of migrants' that might be useful as a guide (the Sherpa) to select good practices, like those on the cooperation with businesses and social partners. At the end of the project there will be a final report, which contains the reflection forms of all partners, links to useful instruments and publications and general conclusions and recommendations on how to improve integration of migrants. As the partnership contains a valuable group of experts and policy makers it is the aim to continue after the project as an international platform for the exchange of Good Practices and other experiences on migration issues, which is of course open to further enlargement.
By the time of the project application, the issue of immigration and the integration of immigrants were high on the policy agenda of EU and OECD countries, both from an economic and a social point of view. Active participation of immigrants in the labour market and, more generally, in public life was (and still is) vital for ensuring social cohesion in the host country and the ability of migrants to function as autonomous, productive and successful citizens. It is also critical for facilitating their acceptance by the host-country population. The reason for an exchange of Good Practices through PLAs was the fact that some European economies and societies are far more successful than others in integrating immigrants into their labour markets and better in offering opportunities to young immigrants to unfold their talents and obtain qualifications. The main objective was to share good practices, to learn from each other and to take over successful approaches, there where possible. For that reason the MBO Raad, as initiator of the project, tried to build a mixed partnership of policymakers on one hand and providers (schools) on the other. This succeeded in all partner countries, although the providers side was generally stronger represented. It is also important to say that the flow of refugees has drastically decreased in the period between the birth of the project idea (mid 2016) and now, which made the project however not less important, as the groups are still there, but the huge sense of urgency was not the same as before and the number of newcomers was for all partners smaller than they expected at the start of the project. The partners realized however that such flows of newcomers can be repeated in the future, which made the focus on the transferability of the lessons learnt for future situations still very important. According to the initial project plan, we had six (6) transnational meetings held in The Netherlands, Finland, Germany, UK. Sweden and Denmark.The partners prepared their own meetings (PLA's), including a presentation of their institution, the work they are doing, their national or regional system and a selected number of Good Practices (interventions) regarding the integration of newcomers. After all these meetings, partners reflected on the value for them of the demonstrated GP's by using a standard reflection form about the possible application of the GP in their own daily practice. In this reflection it was also asked to explain how these good practices could be applied in the own situation and if not useful, why not. Next to this, partners reported about their dissemination and valorisation activities and used a standard form for this, which was called the "Capturing and measuring reach of the project." Finally all transnational meetings were evaluated by the AoC from the UK. It needs to be said that all partners were rather satisfied with the composition of the partnership and the variety of Good Practices, as there was a large diversity of partners ranging from a rather small scale approach in Finland with relatively small groups of immigrants to the large scale integration policy in NL and UK, where a lot of the planning tends to be on a national level. This made that situations were not always comparable and that some of the GP's might not be transferable, but it was nevertheless inspiring to see how partners are working on the same challenges, but with other legislations and on another scale.It was very informative to see how different political choices work out in the practice and to see the pro's and contra's of such choices. This was rather clear in the case of the rather strict (in the eyes of some partners: harsh) policy of Denmark (Randers). Newcomers were offered opportunities, but only if they participated in a full program of learning language and culture, whilst also working in companies. Staying away had immediately consequences for their income. There has been one important change in the project and as a result of that also regarding the distribution of tasks, which was the cancelling of the second LTTA in Sweden. This was done in consultancy with the national NA, as we had made a mistake in the application by calculating only the travelling costs to the LTTA venues, but not the subsistence costs. In order to make it financial feasible, we decided in close consultation with the NA to have one LTTA instead of two. The change in the distribution of tasks was that The Swedish partner had not to organise a LTTA. In spite of having only one LTTA instead of two, we certainly reached our objectives. But it goes almost without saying that two LTTA's should have had a wider impact than one, simply because we should have reached more people.