Transferring Skills across Borders: Improving Credential Recognition in the Transatlantic Labor Market

Barriers to transferring skills and experience between countries are widely recognized as an impediment to immigrant integration and to the international mobility of skilled professionals. On both sides of the Atlantic, evidence abounds that immigrants are often unable to put their skills to productive use because their qualifications, experience, and knowledge are not readily recognized in their destination country’s labor market. The resulting waste of human capital represents a loss to employers, host communities, and immigrants themselves.

This research project—Immigration, Skills, and Mobility in the Transatlantic Labor Market—investigates how governments can improve the recognition of foreign qualifications through domestic public policies and through international cooperation. In particular, it analyzes how European Union and U.S. policymakers learn from policy experience to date, and how they can cooperate more effectively on this issue.

The reports flowing from this project are:

• FINAL REPORT: Skilled Immigrants in the Global Economy: Prospects for International Cooperation on Recognition of Foreign Qualifications
   
• Tackling Brain Waste: Strategies to Improve the Recognition of Immigrants' Foreign Qualifications
   
• Recognizing Foreign Qualifications: Emerging Global Trends
   
• Skills, Professional Regulation, and International Mobility in the Engineering Workforce
   
• Credential Recognition in the United States for Foreign Professionals