The free movement of workers in the European Union increases circular migration. People from Eastern and Southeastern Europe take up jobs in other European countries for short periods, then return to their home countries and start soon to seek further employment abroad. This circular mobility sometimes comes together with precarious working and living conditions. Temporary homelessness, unemployment, and work expulsion are accompanied by discrimination, stigmatization, and exclusion in the home and destination countries. The TSS project set the goal to improve the quality of counseling for the target group in two EU countries through capacity building of professionals. Transnational counseling will prepare mobile EU citizens for the challenges of labor migration and will improve their living conditions in the short and medium term. Parallel to the professionalization of migration counseling, the TSS project had the task of establishing a network for professionals.
In preliminary work and research, a deficit in the counselling of mobile EU citizens, especially from Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, was identified. This target group usually receives little support during their movement between the country of origin (e.g. Bulgaria) and the host country (e.g. Germany). We decided to bring together counsellors from institutions in Bulgaria and Germany, to train them for the specific requirements of working with the target group and to establish a network for exchange beyond the project. With the latter we lay the foundation for cooperation beyond the project.