ABSTRACT
Labour migration has been looked to as a tool to address demographic changes together with labour and skills shortages in many societies. More recently, momentum has been building behind Skills Mobility Partnerships (SMPs), although they account for a small share of skills-related mobility. Unlike many traditional labour migration approaches, SMPs aim to combine mobility with skills development, promoting mutual benefit for migrants, employers and both sending and receiving countries. Drawing on existing literature and the Link4Skills partnership inventory, this chapter compares traditional labour migration approaches with SMPs and investigates the design of various SMPs. It finds that, while SMPs show significant potential for a fairer international movement of skills and filling of shortages, bringing more mutual benefits, concerns and limitations persist. These include: the time- and resource-intensive nature of partnership development, difficulties securing employer buy-in, challenges to scalability and transferability, reliance on existing migration channels and the persistence of unequal power dynamics that may undermine mutual benefits. Realising the full potential of SMPs requires targeted policy changes to enhance migrant (re)integration and broaden participation, especially among disadvantaged groups. Other valuable reforms may include flexibility on mobility duration, expanded migration pathways for lower- and middle-skilled work and the incorporation of remote work possibilities. Last but not least, scaling up SMPs will be key for heightening their impact.
