57%
Qualification recognition
Report challenge with recognition of prior qualifications
66%
Employer barriers
Encounter barriers in hiring and career progression
61%
Stress and insecurity
Experience stress linked to prolonged insecurity
From Research to Real Change
Young migrant workers enter jobs quickly but remain stuck. Career Compass identifies the structural barriers preventing them from accessing education and progressing into skilled careers.
For too many young people, entering the workforce is not just about skills, but about navigating complex and unequal systems.
The Reality Behind The Numbers
These figures highlight the reality faced by many young migrant workers across the European Union.
Despite strong motivation to build a future, they face structural barriers such as language requirements and limited access to information.
Demanding work conditions further prevent them from accessing education and progressing in their careers.
As a result, many remain stuck in low-skilled jobs with few opportunities for long-term development.
78%
Language Barrier
Face language-related barriers
64%
Work–learning conflict
Struggle to combine work and learning
71%
Information gaps
Experience difficulties accessing clear information and guidance
57%
Qualification recognition
Report challenge with recognition of prior qualifications
66%
Employer barriers
Encounter barriers in hiring and career progression
61%
Stress and insecurity
Experience stress linked to prolonged insecurity
78%
Language Barrier
Face language-related barriers
64%
Work–learning conflict
Struggle to combine work and learning
71%
Information gaps
Experience difficulties accessing clear information and guidance
Keys findings
Interviews
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Surveys
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Stakeholders
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What is Career Compass?
Career Compass is a Nordic-Baltic initiative that examines the structural barriers affecting young migrant workers’ ability to access and move forward in education and work.
The project uses a combination of research, stakeholder insights, as well as policy analysis to identify gaps in current systems and propose evidence-based recommendations.
Its objective is to contribute to more inclusive and effective policies that support long-term integration and workforce development.
Funding
Nordplus Horizontal (NPHZ-2025/10187)
Target
Young Migrant Workers (16-30)
Lithuania, Finland and Denmark
Focus Area
Integration, vocational education, labour market inclusion, and policy advocacy.
Key Outputs
The Literature review poses as an analytical foundation of the Career Compass project, providing existing research on migrant access to education, vocational training, and labour market integration across Europe. It highlights recurring structural challenges, including language requirements, labour market segmentation, and barriers to recognition of skills.
The review points to systemic patterns that shape migrant trajectories over time, particularly the risk of early labour market entry leading to long-term limitations in career progression. It establishes a comparative framework that informs subsequent data collection, stakeholder engagement, and barrier analysis within the project.
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This outcome combines a structured mapping of national policies with qualitative insights from migrant workers and stakeholders across Denmark, Finland, and Lithuania. The policy repository examines how existing frameworks support or limit access to education and employment, while interviews provide insight into how these systems function in practice.
Together, these sources reveal the gap between formal access and practical accessibility. While policies and programmes are often in place, their effectiveness is shaped by implementation, coordination, and the ability of individuals to navigate complex systems. This combined evidence base supports a more grounded understanding of how structural barriers operate across different national contexts.
The review points to systemic patterns that shape migrant trajectories over time, particularly the risk of early labour market entry leading to long-term limitations in career progression. It establishes a comparative framework that informs subsequent data collection, stakeholder engagement, and barrier analysis within the project.
The stakeholder mapping identifies key actors involved in education, employment, integration, and policy implementation at local, national, and sectoral levels. It includes public institutions, training providers, employers, NGOs, and community organisations.
The mapping highlights how responsibilities are distributed across systems and where coordination gaps emerge. It also identifies which actors play a central role in enabling or limiting access to opportunities, particularly in areas such as vocational training, guidance services, and labour market entry. This provides a foundation for targeted engagement and for aligning future policy recommendations with existing structures.
The review points to systemic patterns that shape migrant trajectories over time, particularly the risk of early labour market entry leading to long-term limitations in career progression. It establishes a comparative framework that informs subsequent data collection, stakeholder engagement, and barrier analysis within the project.
Barrier identification consolidates evidence from the literature review, survey data, interviews, and stakeholder consultations to define the key structural obstacles affecting young migrant workers.
The analysis shows that barriers are not isolated but cumulative and interconnected. The most significant include language as a gatekeeper, time constraints linked to employment, fragmented information systems, non-recognition of prior learning, and employer gatekeeping. These barriers shape a common trajectory in which individuals enter the labour market quickly but face limited opportunities for further education and progression.
This outcome establishes a systems-level understanding of exclusion, shifting the focus from individual motivation to structural conditions.
The review points to systemic patterns that shape migrant trajectories over time, particularly the risk of early labour market entry leading to long-term limitations in career progression. It establishes a comparative framework that informs subsequent data collection, stakeholder engagement, and barrier analysis within the project.
This outcome builds on the identified barriers by analysing existing practices and interventions that attempt to address them across the three countries.
The analysis identifies four main types of responses: guidance and navigation support, employer-mediated access to employment, integrated work-and-learning pathways, and recognition of skills mechanisms. It shows that effective approaches rarely target a single barrier, but instead combine multiple elements to reflect the realities of migrant workers already engaged in employment.
At the same time, the findings highlight limitations related to scalability, accessibility, and coordination. This outcome provides the basis for developing integrated policy models that address barriers in a more systemic and sustainable way.
The policy report brings together all findings of the Career Compass project into a set of evidence-based recommendations for improving access to education, vocational training, and career progression for young migrant workers.
It translates analytical insights into practical guidance for policymakers, institutions, and stakeholders, with a focus on integrated approaches that combine language learning, flexible training, employer engagement, and guidance systems. The report also reflects cross-country differences while identifying common structural challenges, ensuring that recommendations are both context-sensitive and transferable.
Overall, the policy report aims to support more inclusive and effective systems that enable long-term progression rather than short-term labour market integration.
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Stakeholder Validation
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