Creating labour mobility opportunities allowing refugees to move lawfully from first asylum countries to receiving countries, based on their skills and qualifications and recipient labour market needs, is a policy idea that deserves to be explored and tested. The conceptual framework presented in this report sketches the potential, the key elements and main issues to be addressed in creating such opportunities through a skills-based complementary pathway to protection. The central element of a skills-based pathway is matching refugees’ skills and qualifications and labour market needs in a potential receiving country that offers adult refugees a clear perspective of employment with a clear route to self-reliance. The process must also safeguard political, social and economic sustainability in the receiving country, creating a triple win situation: for the refugees themselves, for the first asylum countries and for the receiving countries.
