POLICY BRIEF N. 5 - MARCH 2020
SIRIUS CONSORTIUM
Social partners play a key role in labour market dynamics as they contribute towards determining
the policy and legal frameworks that shape labour markets, but also the social, political and economic
trends in which labour markets are embedded. Therefore, an examination of social partners’
understanding of the newcomers’ capacities and their appreciation of opportunities and challenges
to be addressed is unavoidable in any research willing to understand how to facilitate unlocking the
employment potential of third country nationals, being these migrants, refugees or asylum applicants
(MRAs—please note that SIRIUS only focuses on non-EU migrants).
Therefore, in this policy brief we present evidence and policy considerations about the role social
partners and social dialogue play in labour market integration of migrants, refugees and asylum
seekers, with the aim to present the views of trade unions and employers representatives concerning
barriers or enablers of post-2014 MRAs integration in European labour markets across the seven
countries studied in SIRIUS (Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Switzerland and the
United Kingdom). We focus on post-2014 MRAs given the peak in migration and asylum figures
Europe has experienced in 2015 and 2016 and the limited research-based evidence about them.