Yves here. We’ve repeatedly argued that one of the reason immigration has gotten a bad name, particularly officially-sponsored refugee initiatives such as Germany and other EU members accepting large numbers of Syrians in 2015 and 2016, is the lack of planning (including basics like temporary housing) and little to no thought about how to get them employed and otherwise integrated into their new home countries. Keep in mind that nations like Germany accept the proposition that they need migrants to compensate for below-level birthrates. And Syrians in particular were seen as a potentially desirable group due to the high caliber of public education in Syria.
This article looks at some of the nuts and bolts of facilitating refugee integration. Contrary to the common practice of giving new entrants language and job training before trying to place them in jobs, it seems the better way is to get the refugees into work settings and provide instruction in parallel. This makes sense; if you’ve ever tried learning a language, a lot of daily exposure (even if you can’t yet grasp much of what is said), speeds becoming competent. A second advantage of putting refugees with an employer is that they will acquire industry-specific vocabulary early. And making personal connections is a big plus in getting settled in a strange country.
An important factoid is in the headline: this approach is not expensive.
By Giovanni Abbiati, Associate Professor of Sociology University Of Brescia; Erich Battistin, Faculty Associate at the Maryland Population Research Center and Professor of Economics University Of Maryland; Paola Monti, Research Coordinator Ing. Rodolfo Debenedetti Foundation; and Paolo Pinotti, Dean of the Faculty, Professor of Economics at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, and Endowed Chair in the Economic Analysis of Crime Bocconi University; Coordinator Ing. Rodolfo Debenedetti Foundation. Originally published at VoxEU
The number of people fleeing war and persecution worldwide has nearly tripled since the early 2010s, challenging European policymakers to ensure swift integration of asylum seekers into the labour market. This column assesses a pilot programme in Italy that provides early, personalised labour market support to asylum seekers. Even in resource-constrained settings, the early targeted support led to a 30% net increase in employment, improved the quality of employment, boosted language proficiency, and fostered greater social integration with the local communities.
As European policymakers revisit migration policy amidst rising political pressure and renewed arrivals across the Mediterranean, one of the most pressing questions is how to ensure that asylum seekers can integrate swiftly into the labour market. The challenge is not new, but it has become urgent. Since the early 2010s, the number of people fleeing war and persecution worldwide nearly tripled, from 11 million to 36 million. Across Europe, asylum systems are widely seen as too slow, disconnected from economic realities, and poorly equipped to support newcomers’ transition into employment. Finding ways to improve integration for asylum seekers in their new countries can reduce the global tensions around this vulnerable population.
A growing consensus points to early labour market access as a key ingredient for successful integration (e.g. Fasani et al. 2018). Rather than placing asylum seekers in prolonged language or vocational courses before they are allowed to work, fast-tracking them into jobs with targeted support can prevent long periods of inactivity that often erode skills and motivation (Schuettler and Caron 2020). Delays caused by asylum procedures and bureaucratic hurdles to obtaining work permits hinder both economic independence and social inclusion (Fasani et al. 2020). Thus, shortening the ‘waiting period’ and providing employment support services early on can yield significant benefits, for both individuals and host communities.
Despite being one of the EU’s main entry points, Italy has long been an outlier when it comes to timely support. Its asylum system remains fragmented, heavily reliant on emergency accommodations (the so-called CAS centres), and often provides little or no help with job readiness. Asylum seekers are legally permitted to work after 60 days, but few receive meaningful assistance in finding employment. As a result, many spend years in limbo: legally able but practically unable to integrate into the labour market.
It is into this policy vacuum that the FORWORK pilot stepped in (Abbiati et al. 2025). Implemented between 2018 and 2021 in Northern Italy, its core idea is simple: offer early, personalised labour market support to asylum seekers, even before their refugee status is officially recognised.
What sets the FORWORK pilot apart is not just its early intervention model, but its implementation in one of the first-arrival countries, where such initiatives are rare and urgently needed. Most of what we know about refugee integration comes from Northern Europe and focuses on recognised refugees (e.g. Irastorza 2016 and Foged et al. 2022 for reviews of the evidence in Sweden and Denmark, respectively). By contrast, FORWORK tested whether entry-point countries can start building integration capacity from the outset, offering support before refugee status is even granted.
FORWORK offered a concrete model for active labour market policies tailored to refugees’ specific needs – rather than one-size-fits-all educational training or passive support – and was designed to assess if such a model can be timely and effective.
An Early-Integration Experiment
The pilot launched in Italy’s Piedmont region and was born from an ambitious alliance between public institutions, NGOs, and academic researchers. 1 The pilot targeted a critical phase in the asylum process: the period soon after arrival, when most asylum seekers in the country receive little more than food and shelter. It focused on residents of CAS centres, where services are minimal and employment support is virtually nonexistent.
Participants were offered a tailored bundle of services: job mentoring, vocational guidance, language and civic education, and paid internships with local employers. The intervention began with a one-on-one session with a job mentor, who helped assess each asylum seeker’s skills and prior work experience using the EU Skills Profile Tool for Third Country Nationals. Together, mentors and mentees crafted a personalised plan aligned with the participant’s aspirations and occupational background. Mentors remained a steady point of contact, offering guidance, encouragement, and help navigating the Italian labour market.
The programme design allowed for a gold-standard evaluation. CAS centres were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, making it possible to rigorously measure FORWORK’s impact. A total of 622 asylum seekers were offered participation, and two-thirds (409) accepted. Outcomes were tracked using administrative data, supplemented by two dedicated surveys conducted before and after the intervention.
Benefits: Employment, Language Proficiency, and Trust
In a recent working paper (Abbiati et al. 2025), we show that FORWORK participants were more likely to gain formal employment and stable contracts, and gains were larger for those who participated in subsidised internships. Despite disruptions from COVID-19 during the study period, remote one-on-one mentoring preserved much of the programme’s intended support, suggesting resilience even in other constrained or emergency contexts, not just in ideal conditions.
Over an 18-month follow-up period, the pilot led to a 30% net increase in employment. Figure 1 shows that participants’ employment rate was 10 percentage points higher than the control group (43% versus 33%), a striking 30% relative increase. Among men, employment rose by 15 points. Among women, who are typically harder to reach in such labour market interventions, employment rose by 8 to 10 points, nearly doubling their baseline rate. Women, African nationals, and individuals with no prior work experience were especially likely to engage with and benefit from mentoring.
Figure 1 Effects of job mentoring on employment
The quality of employment also improved. Participants were more likely to hold fixed-term or permanent contracts and reported higher monthly earnings (a 30% increase relative to the control group). Paid internships, offered to about 20% of participants, appeared to play a catalytic role, easing the transition from job search to regular employment. Crucially, these gains reflect real increases in employment and not just a shift from informal to formal jobs.In the absence of FORWORK, the data show that over 8% of asylum seekers in the target population would be working under verbal agreements or without contracts, leaving them exposed to exploitation and outside the protections of labour law. This is a striking figure, especially given how little is known about the extent to which newly arrived migrants are absorbed into informal labour markets.
There is more: the benefits of FORWORK extend beyond paychecks. As shown in Figure 2, language proficiency rose by 15 to 20 percentage points across comprehension, reading, and speaking. Participants also reported greater trust in Italians and more frequent social interaction with locals, as demonstrated in Figure 3. These are all signs that early labour market inclusion can also foster broader social integration in the new communities.
Figure 2 Effects of job mentoring on language proficiency
Figure 3 Effects of job mentoring on social integration
A) Trusting people
B) Meeting people
Costs and Scalability
One of FORWORK’s greatest strengths was its cost-effectiveness. The average cost per participant was just over €3,000, a figure in line with standard Italian labour market programmes for unemployed citizens. Nearly 80% of that spending went directly to services and staff, while only 6% covered internships. In other words, FORWORK did not require a new infrastructure or an extraordinary injection of public funds into subsidised employment. It leveraged existing local employment centres and trained job mentors to work with asylum seekers. The model is practical, replicable, and scalable in other countries, provided there is political will and minimal institutional coordination.
What Policymakers Should Know: ‘Early’ Matters
For policymakers looking to reduce the fiscal and social costs of asylum reception, the case for early labour market integration is compelling. The FORWORK pilot stands out as one of the few randomised evaluations of refugee labour market interventions in Europe. While not a silver bullet, it offers a practical, evidence-based model for doing better with modest means. Its core lesson is simple but powerful: early, targeted support can dramatically improve employment outcomes for asylum seekers, even in resource-constrained settings.
This challenges the status quo in many EU countries, where integration services are often delayed until after refugee status is formally granted. But these delays carry real costs: prolonged inactivity erodes skills, dampens motivation, and fosters perceptions of dependency. Worse, it can deprive local economies of much-needed labour, particularly in sectors facing persistent shortages. Delayed integration also raises the risk of informal employment and, in some cases, involvement in criminal activities. These outcomes feed public resentment and fuel political backlash against asylum policies.
We have learnt from FORWORK that these outcomes are not inevitable. With relatively modest investments and thoughtful design, it’s possible to accelerate integration and deliver tangible benefits for both asylum seekers and host communities. Better services don’t necessarily attract more arrivals: they may just improve the prospects of those already present, helping them become self-sufficient sooner. And they may offer a more sustainable alternative to costlier, less effective approaches, such as long-term housing subsidies (Tamin et al. 2025).
See original post for references
