Labor Mobility for Crisis-Affected People
A Critical Option in an Aid-Less World
With aid budgets collapsing and millions of people left outside the humanitarian response, traditional approaches to supporting crisis-affected people are clearly not enough. Now might be the time to consider — or reconsider, for the skeptical — labor mobility as a viable solution for displacement.
I often make the economic and demographic case for South-North mobility, but my colleague at The Migration Opportunity, Elise Shea, brings a humanitarian perspective and experience to this topic. Elise has spent the past decade working at the intersection of displacement, aid reform, and social innovations. She founded Conversations Unbound to provide livelihood opportunities to displaced people as language tutors, and later led research, policy, and advocacy work with Ground Truth Solutions to ensure aid programming reflects crisis-affected people’s preferences and is led by them. As a consultant with GiveDirectly, she evaluated their novel cash transfer program to victims of Cyclone Freddy in Malawi, examining its effectiveness through cash recipients’ eyes.
Below, Elise makes a detailed argument that labor mobility, a still nascent but growing field, can and should become a viable pathway for crisis-affected people to move beyond cycles of instability and aid dependency, and offers one option to the existential crisis humanitarian organizations face in an aid-less world.
Global humanitarian funding has plummeted dramatically in 2025, with only $6 billion secured by the end of June compared to $9 billion at the same point last year — a 33% decline despite total requests reaching $44 billion for the year. Facing this severe shortfall, the United Nations launched a “hyper-prioritized” strategy in May, concentrating resources on the most vulnerable populations. Now, nearly 200 million people requiring humanitarian assistance will fall outside the scope of the international response.
Yet prior to the United States’ sharp 2025 aid reductions — later mirrored by Britain, the Netherlands, and Germany, and resulting in drastic consequences for life-saving interventions — people in crisis received much less than they needed. And many who received humanitarian assistance pre-2025 did not think aid met their basic needs or came close to helping them truly restart their lives. Ground Truth Solutions found that insufficient funding is only part of the problem; humanitarians often fail to ensure aid is community-led and acts on people’s preferences.
One of the primary preferences expressed by crisis-affected populations (refugees, displaced people, and vulnerable host communities) is for agency to decide where to live and work. Refugee resettlement has always been limited to a tiny minority. Now, with reduced aid funding, it’s even more critical to actively seek transformative alternatives — and labor mobility should be one of them. With high-income countries grappling with labor scarcity and aging populations, they are creating education and work visa programs that can act as complementary pathways for crisis-affected people. These programs, including a few exclusively reserved for displaced people, enable legal movement and a path to permanent residency.
This policy shift opens up a real, albeit nascent, opportunity for crisis-affected populations to leave cycles of instability and continuous humanitarian need. (This opportunity sits alongside critical efforts to open up labor market access in current host countries.) But while significant resources are directed to promoting micro-entrepreneurship or employment in low-income host countries where such work is allowed, very few organizations consider cross-border labor mobility as an intervention.
Humanitarian organizations and funders who care about crisis-affected people should consider partnering with the emerging labor mobility field. It offers one solution when other options fall short of meeting the need. Aid organizations’ involvement can also ensure that, in a nascent but promising new area, the most vulnerable get the protection and support they need.
Below, I address four possible reasons why humanitarian organizations and funders might not already be exploring this solution, and invite greater engagement in this space:
They don’t know it exists.
They’re worried about whether labor mobility aligns with their humanitarian values.
They don’t know how it would be funded in an era of shrinking resources.
They think programs to support integration into local markets should be prioritized instead of labor mobility.
1. Closed Door Narrative, Open Door Policy
Despite the rise in stridently anti-immigrant political narratives across various countries, many of these same countries are creating labor mobility pathways to address workforce shortages and boost their economies. These often include a path to permanence, making them suitable for crisis-affected people looking to relocate:
Italy announced that it will issue nearly 500,000 new work visas for non-EU nationals from 2026 to 2028, marking one of the most ambitious labor pathway initiatives in recent years. The move is part of a wider migration strategy to fill workforce gaps in critical sectors.
Germany implemented a comprehensive framework to attract non-EU workers, with multiple immigration pathways for skilled workers and those seeking vocational training.
Japan reached a record 2.3 million foreign workers as of October 2024, representing a 12.4% increase from the previous year. Approximately 342,000 businesses now employ at least one foreign worker, a 7.3% annual increase.
Spain’s recent reforms have streamlined the immigration process to help fill its workforce gap of 250,000 additional workers annually.
Other countries are experimenting with labor pathways specifically reserved for and designed with the needs of displaced people in mind:
Canada’s Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot (EMPP) helps displaced talent immigrate to Canada for jobs as nurses, medical assistants, patient attendants, chefs, cooks, front desk staff, carpenters, construction workers, and other skilled trades, while providing employers access to qualified candidates.
Australia’s Skilled Refugee Labour Agreement Pilot aims to remove the obstacles that refugees and displaced people face in accessing employer-sponsored skilled migration opportunities in Australia.
The UK has launched the Displaced Talent Mobility Pilot, which provides access to the UK’s skilled worker visa, as well as specific safeguards to prevent participants from being returned to a country where they could face danger if they lose their job. This week, the UK announced that it will formalize the pilot program by creating a capped pathway that allows skilled refugees and displaced individuals to come to the country for employment.
OECD countries, in short, are scrambling for workers. Some of them could be crisis-affected people who otherwise would not have access to cross-border labor opportunities.
Several initiatives have recognized this and achieved early success: Talent Beyond Boundaries was the first organization in the world to focus on labor mobility as a complementary pathway for refugees and has supported nearly 3,000 people to permanently move for work. They instigated the UK and Australia pilots described above, and they aim to reach 15,000 people by the end of 2027. RefugePoint was among the first to utilize Canada’s EMPP, partnering with the Canadian government and the UNHCR to support skilled refugees in Kenya to secure visas in occupations like nursing and elderly care. While these labor mobility efforts are still in early stages, they hold potential for scale and an opportunity for humanitarian organizations to tap into.
2. Dignified Labor Mobility Is Happening
Many humanitarian organizations and funders will rightly point out that countries often open labor mobility pathways out of self-interest rather than a sense of moral obligation to crisis-affected people or a newfound openness to foreigners. In Italy, the government is targeting illegal arrivals, speeding up repatriations, and targeting initiatives that rescue migrants trying to reach Europe by sea. Germany’s labor mobility pathways exist at the same time as the government rejects asylum seekers at its borders and discusses plans to deport people to Syria. Even Canada has announced reductions in immigration targets by nearly a quarter over the next 3 years. And just this week, the UK unveiled new measures aimed at accelerating the removal of illegal migrants from the country, including plans to rescind refugee status for those whose countries are now deemed safe.
Humanitarians may feel uncomfortable with the idea of facilitating labor mobility if it appears to position crisis-affected people as economic pawns. Upon joining this space, I also felt uneasy about the idea of providing an opportunity to crisis-affected people that seems to reduce them to actors in the capitalistic machine. And even though this allows them to leave crisis contexts, I wondered how this process of moving for work might diminish their sense of humanity in different ways. Further, heightened anti-immigrant rhetoric can pose a real risk to people who move to these countries for work. Since my past work scrutinized how well humanitarians protect people when they receive aid, I couldn’t help but think about the layers of support workers need in their new contexts to safeguard their mental, social, and physical well-being.
Labor mobility is also not an option for everyone. Policies to access labor mobility pathways often set the requirement at a high school education, creating a structural barrier for crisis-affected people, many of whose education was interrupted or who do not have the paperwork to prove completion. Older adults are also rarely considered viable candidates. Employers tend to seek workers who will stay with this job for the long term, aiming to maximize their investment in recruitment and training. And while some pathways have mechanisms where workers’ families can join them, family reunification is not always coupled with labor mobility programs. Programs supporting people to move for work will skew toward younger, unattached workers, rather than offering a solution across different demographic groups.
Despite these concerns and shortcomings, the opportunities for good outweigh the risks (and the risks of inaction). Labor mobility programs provide a key benefit by pre-arranging work for the migrant, a challenge that resettled refugees often face. Further, the subset of crisis-affected people for whom labor mobility can work is still very large. Supporting them to access opportunities can increase resources available for people who cannot, through remittances and by freeing up aid for the most vulnerable, since labor mobility can pay for itself (see next section). And while we should keep our “protection lens” on to ensure that people who migrate for work are not abused in the process, we should also give crisis-affected people a choice, especially considering the risks they are facing under the status quo.
A refugee leader in Uganda we spoke with reflected this wish for choice given local labor market opportunities, “I don’t want to be a tailor or work in a salon, I want to be a peacemaker, or a lawyer...I want to be somebody in life.” A registered nurse who had to work first as a nurse assistant in order to enter Canada through the EMPP pathways told us, “Yes, I had to get repeat training, but it was worth it because I was now the one making decisions about my future.” The aid community should not act as a gatekeeper simply because we have doubts about labor mobility. There is one moral obligation to protect people and another to empower them to be autonomous. We can share trustworthy information about labor mobility options, how to access them, the risks, and how to mitigate them — and then let people choose if they want to move for work.
Thankfully, there are already strong examples of providing thoughtful, wraparound support to crisis-affected people using mobility pathways. Pathways Japan creates educational mobility pathways for refugees with a focus on tailored, individualized support. Its programs emphasize community, using language training as both a critical skill-building tool and a way to foster strong bonds within each cohort. Aware of the challenges of anti-immigrant sentiment — particularly fears that migrants might change Japanese society — Pathways ensures participants demonstrate a clear commitment to integration before arrival and achieve Japanese language proficiency. By sharing stories of refugees who have successfully embedded themselves in Japanese society, Pathways Japan seeks to challenge stereotypes and reduce anti-immigrant attitudes nationwide.
Malengo’s Kenya-Germany TVET program prioritizes participants’ safety and well-being by providing psychosocial and legal assistance as needed, and fosters a strong sense of community through networks of mentors, peers, and professionals in both Kenya and Germany. This holistic approach ensures not only that participants acquire the qualifications to work, but they are also able to build their new lives with dignity, community, and support for their well-being. Talent Beyond Boundaries’ programming places people directly into jobs, conducting rigorous employer vetting, leveraging employer support systems, as well as providing integration support and access to its alumni network.
3. Innovative Finance Unlocks New Funding Possibilities
Labor mobility opens up new funding possibilities because it unlocks economic value for both employers and workers. The investments required for labor mobility mostly overlap with typical expenses for refugee self-reliance or resettlement: skilling and re-skilling, language training, travel, visas, accommodation, and other costs related to integration in a new home. In the long run, employers can cover many of these costs to fill critical workforce gaps, and a number have already, even though it costs more than hiring locally. However, most employers in high-income countries have never recruited workers from crisis contexts and are concerned about retention rates or other risks associated with hiring from abroad. Demonstrated success along with risk- and cost-reducing measures are essential to activate the full potential of latent employer demand.
In the meantime, innovative finance mechanisms can make labor mobility feasible and scalable right now, in particular because the income gains at stake for workers greatly exceed the costs of programming. Malengo exemplifies this model by using income share agreements (ISAs), a tool that replaces traditional loans with a future-income-based repayment plan, to support refugees living in Kenya and Rwanda to move to Germany for apprenticeship training and then employment. Malengo’s program costs are covered by participants who commit to paying a share of their income only after they begin earning above a minimum threshold (e.g., €27,000/year), ensuring that financial risk does not block access to opportunity. Participants have suggested they are inspired to “pay it forward” as they recognize that their repayments help Malengo support the next generation to move for opportunity. This program represents an opportunity for refugees to increase their income by 5,000% compared to average incomes in camps.
By eliminating the need for upfront payments, credit histories, or collateral, ISAs make training and migration viable even for the most financially excluded. Investors in these instruments can enable faster scaling. They base their investment decisions on the likelihood that a given program will successfully place people in jobs and their expected incomes from those jobs. Since investors only get paid on long-term success, the incentives are aligned between investors, finance and mobility providers, and migrants.
The Shapiro Foundation, which invested in Malengo’s German programs, looks to support other applications of finance to make mobility self-sustaining. For example, the Foundation invested in a new ISA solution in Italy that, together with employer contributions, enables a philanthropically funded train-to-hire program to become self-sustaining. Employers cover most costs, including training in host countries, and the ISA covers costs related to settling in after arrival. ISAs are just one of a number of financial solutions that help reduce dependence on philanthropy. Others posited include outcomes-dependent loans and employer risk-pooling mechanisms. Existing financial solutions for crisis-affected people, such as loans to help finance family reunification, can further complement innovative financing mechanisms.
4. Labor Mobility is Self-Reliance
Sometimes labor mobility is contrasted with refugee self-reliance programming, which focuses on supporting refugees to access labor markets in their host countries. We’ve heard that labor mobility is too hard or not a good fit for most refugees. But this perspective misses an opportunity to center people’s own aspirations and decision-making, rather than limiting the range of options available to them. In reality, labor mobility is transformative self-reliance programming, both for individuals and communities. One successful job placement in the OECD can deliver remittances equivalent to 10 jobs in a host country, on top of life-changing income for the worker’s household.
Simar Singh, Chief Program Officer of RefugePoint, points out the inconsistency in treating self-reliance work and labor mobility programming as separate efforts. Self-reliance programming focuses on skilling and upskilling, technical training, freedom of movement, credentialing, and so on — all to support vulnerable non-citizens to access the labor market in the country where they now live. Yet Singh emphasizes that this is exactly the same groundwork that needs to be done to support labor mobility. “What are we losing by not looking at the similarities in terms of the work that needs to be done [across these two programmatic areas]?” she asks. Rather than promote artificial distinctions between the two types of programming, they should be seen as reinforcing the same goal of supporting long-term solutions for crisis-affected populations — advocacy that RefugePoint has spearheaded for years now.
Programming designed so that self-reliance and labor mobility support and complement each other will improve efficient use of limited resources and augment opportunities for crisis-affected people to access a selection of long-term solutions. Ali, a Palestinian mechanical engineer in Germany who was previously a refugee in Lebanon, emphasized that “NGOs should empower students with skills and make them more qualified for the labor market, so that students can have the freedom to decide whether they want to stay or move abroad, depending on their career paths or personal preferences.”
Actions for Funders and Humanitarian Organizations
Labor mobility presents open windows in a landscape of closed doors. But it’s underfunded and under-appreciated. Funders working for the livelihoods and well-being of crisis-affected populations should consider:
Including labor mobility in refugee self-reliance, livelihood, and youth employment portfolios. Labor mobility programs leverage and strengthen the same technical and soft-skill building infrastructure required for livelihood or self-reliance programming in host countries — but they tap into a much larger source of employer demand.
Investing in dignified pathways that include holistic support. Support programs that provide not just skills and employment opportunities but also offer the psychosocial, legal, and community support that crisis-affected people need to resettle with care.
Humanitarian organizations can help enhance the effectiveness of labor mobility for crisis-affected people by:
De-risking labor mobility. Humanitarian organizations’ participation in the labor mobility space can ensure that mobility programs are set up to work in the best interests of crisis-affected people. These organizations, particularly those that are community-based, know their communities’ needs best and can advise on the specific programming needed to make labor mobility work for them, playing a vital role in helping the labor mobility space be more inclusive.
Adapting current programming to prepare people to move for work. Humanitarian organizations that already offer education programming for adults should consider how their programming could be adapted to support people with language training, skilling, re-skilling, and credentialing programs to support their labor mobility process. Those organizations that have legal and protection expertise in preparing people for refugee resettlement can apply those same skills to getting people ready to move for work.
Partnering with labor mobility initiatives. Labor mobility programming for crisis-affected people will attract new entrants into this space, and humanitarian organizations could collaborate with mobility organizations to provide complementary support that aligns with their expertise (e.g., support navigating documentation processes that differ from those for host country nationals).
Informing people of labor mobility as an option. If robust labor mobility pathways exist, humanitarians should share this opportunity with the populations they serve, empowering people with information to choose opportunities for themselves.
This is just a start to thinking about how humanitarians could support labor mobility to advance long-term solutions for crisis-affected people in an era of increasing resource strain. Reach out to us to tell us what you think — and what we’ve missed — about labor mobility as a long-term option for crisis-affected people.
 | A guest post by
|
Very interesting article, Jason & Elise!