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Valuing diversity: guidance for labour market integration of migrants

unemployed. Women tend to be privileged as client groups, given their
fundamental role in the integration of immigrant children, their potential as role
models for younger girls, and the need to minimise the family risk of social
exclusion. There is also evidence of targeted development of ICT skills and third
language skills for older immigrant workers.
The targeted approach illustrates the attempt to anticipate responses to
community needs and barriers to integration and development. Needs
identification can be taken further, both at community and individual level;
evaluated needs are mostly basic literacy, although some countries have made
an effort to identify further integration and career development needs. Such
needs will usually be assessed if the services provided include information about
learning, qualification possibilities and individualised career counselling.
Several countries report an integrated approach of this kind (Belgium,
Greece, France) and many report some sort of connection to immigrant career
development support via employment services. The way joint basic reception and
integration services and career planning are carried out is not entirely clear in
many cases; for example, it is not always clear how immigrants are sent to follow-
up actions from the reception services to the PES or what kind of information
they carry concerning their skills and needs.
Usually the approach the language and civic programmes adopt is based on
a summative evaluation of skills and knowledge, expected to be developed within
traditional curriculum-based courses. The degree of adaptation of these courses
depends on a previous literacy assessment or the integration of pedagogic
elements that account for the learning specificities of cultural groups and
individuals.
Although the summative evaluation strategy is practical and easy to
implement, it carries the fundamental problem of not necessarily laying down an
individual career development path. It reflects an idea of sufficiency of skills for
successful integration, with limited consideration of contexts and characteristics
of individuals. Alternative/complementary, approaches based on more
comprehensive assessment methodologies can be used to register skills and
needs, allowing for more targeted interventions and for a more self-reflexive
process on behalf of the individuals.
This type of formative (Sultana, 2011) assessment can serve many
purposes besides evaluating the immediate outcomes of a basic integration
course: it can stimulate individual self-reflection about his/her career
development needs and motivate people to further learning; it can inform
employment services, trainers, schools and guidance services so that they can
better adjust their provision; it can assist validation processes.

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