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Once Learnt Never Forgotten - Recognition of Qualifications Acquired Abroad: A Key to Labour Market Integration in Germany
On April 1st 2012 the German „Law to improve the assessment and recognition of professional and vocational education and training qualifications acquired abroad” (Recognition Act) entered into force. The aim of the law is to foster the labour market prospects for skilled workers, who gained their professional or vocational qualifications abroad.
The Recognition Act provides migrants, not depending on their residential status, with access to an equivalence assessment of their professional or vocational qualifications with the German reference qualification. It applies both for regulated and non-regulated occupations. In addition, relevant occupational experience can be used to compensate substantial differences identified in the equivalence assessment.
Our presentation will be based on empirical data and is going to present a case study of how skilled working migrants can be integrated into the German labour market. Therefore, the implications of the Recognition Act will be discussed focusing on experiences from 5 years since the law has been in place.
We are going to present the latest data of the German official statistics for occupations governed by federal law covering data currently available from 2012 to 2016. The official statistics consists of reportable data, which is delivered by the competent authorities.
Results of the year’s evaluation of the Recognition Act regarding its impact on labour market integration of migrants
Experiences with skills assessment tools developed and applied in the project Prototyping Transfer. An well-established procedure when migrants cannot produce the relevant documents or certificates to prove their formal qualifications.
Furthermore by presenting findings of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP survey focusing on refugees (2017) we put a special focus on refugees and put these into perspective with aforementioned data from the official statistics.