The main objective of this report is to analyse and inform about international labour mobility, particularly within Europe, from the perspective of the Dutch Health and Social Care Sector. The report starts by describing the introduction of a new care system in The Netherlands. The government does not participate directly in the actual provision of care. This is a task principally for private care suppliers. Furthermore, the legal position of the Health and Social Care professions, regulated through the Individual Health Care Professions Act, and questions like the international recognition of degrees and the evaluation of foreign diplomas are discussed. This is followed by a clarification of the Dutch education system, particularly, relating to the study of medicine, nursing education and social work education. Subsequently, some core data on the ageing Dutch population are presented. The grey pressure increases and this will have an impact on health spending, health support and the future labour market. Then what follows is a description of the development of employment in the Dutch Health and Social Care Sector, per branch as well as the professions that are engaged in it. The general picture, at this moment, is that the Health and Social Care labour market is reasonably in balance. This trend will continue in the near future; shortages are expected only in the long term. All research done on the subject indicates that international mobility of medical and social professionals is still low in the Netherlands. The question remains whether a more active recruitment policy would be a solution for the expected long term shortages. The report concludes with a look at recruitment policy and some of its developments at the global, national and local level.
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Whilst until the late 1980s most migration issues developed in a parallel manner but with national specifics, important differences showed up during the 1990s and at the beginning of this decade. Since the middle of the 1990s, there has been an obvious change in policy towards migrants and foreigners in the Netherlands, and those changes have been more or less “exported” to our neighbouring countries and even to the level of the EU. Integration into society with the maintenance of the immigrant’s own culture has been replaced by integration into the Dutch society after passing an integration examination. The focus of this article is to investigate those changes and to compare the implementation of those policies in the Netherlands/Limburg and Germany/NRW, where the official understanding of not being an immigration country was dominant until the end of the 1990s, and where integration has only recently become an important political issue. Both countries are now facing similar challenges for better integration into the society, especially into the educational system. Firstly, the autors describe migration definitions, types, the numbers of migrants and the backgrounds of migrant policies in Germany and the Netherlands up until the middle of the 1990s. Secondly they discuss the integration policies thereafter: the pathway to a new policy and the Action Plan Integration in Germany, and the central ideas of the Civic Integration of Newcomers Act (WIN) in the Netherlands. Integration policy in the Netherlands is highly centralised with little differentiation on the local governmental level when compared to South Limburg. Thirdly, the autors investigate the cross-border cooperation between professional organisations and educational institutions in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, and the involvement of social work institutions and social workers in their process of integration into the local society and the exchange of each others’ experiences (the ECSW and RECES projects).
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"Despite many efforts, people with a refugee background still have great difficulties to find a job on the Dutch labour market. This has adverse consequences for the economic independence of people with a refugee background, their social connections, personal development, health and general well-being, but also for employers as well as society in general. There are many sectors in the Dutch labour market with large, structural labor shortages, while at the same time much talent remains untapped. Meanwhile, more and more social enterprises in the Netherlands are stepping into this void, with the explicit goal to facilitate access to the labour market for people with a vulnerable position, including people with a refugee background. Consequently, these so-called work integration social enterprises (WISEs) are — by far — the dominant type of social enterprises in the Netherlands. Although the diversity between WISEs in terms of economic sectors, specific target groups and business models is large, the way in which they organize their key activities can serve as an example for regular employers, who still tend to think in problems rather than opportunities when it comes to employing people with a refugee background. At the same time, the impact of these social enterprises still remains relatively limited in comparison to the scale of the societal challenge. The aim of this study therefore is twofold: 1) to obtain a better understanding of the role of WISEs with regard to the sustainable labor participation of refugees, and 2) to assess the ways in which WISEs can scale their societal impact with respect to labour participation of refugees. These conference proceedings focus in particular on (new) forms of collaboration between WISEs and regular employers that aim to become more inclusive employers."
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