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Critical Skills for Life and Work

Developing the Professional Intercultural Communicative Competence of highly-skilled refugees

According to the BBC and Eurostat there are about a million refugee asylum seekers in the EU. Educational attainment varies by country of origin, but in the case of Syria, the largest single source of refugees, around 6% of refugees are graduates, a majority of which have prior professional experience before being forced to flee. This means that among Syrian refugees alone there are over 5,000 professionals who might be able to contribute key professional skills and experience to their host countries. Currently, these so-called highly skilled refugees are not well served. This project aims to design and implement effective training tools for enhancing key skills and competences of both highly skilled refugees and the language teachers who work with them, and thus enhance the employability and societal integration of skilled refugees. 

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Research theme: Multilingualism and Language learning
Duration: 01/09/2017 - 31/08/2019
Coordinating partner: University of Newcastle upon Tyne (United Kingdom)
Mercator staff: Anna-Fardau Schukking, Cor van der Meer
Funding: Erasmus+
Collaboration with:
University of Newcastle upon Tyne (United Kingdom)
Universitaet Graz (Austria)
Action Foundation (United Kingdom)

Project Activities

This is an Erasmus+ funded project which aims to design and implement effective training tools for enhancing key skills and competences of (a) highly-skilled refugees and (b) the language teachers who work with them, and so enhance the employability and societal integration of skilled refugees.

Highly-skilled refugees, i.e. people with qualifications as professionals (UNESCO. 2016), are a specific adult target group that is currently not well served. According to the UNHCR there are now well over a million refugee asylum seekers in the EU.  Prior educational attainment varies by country of origin, but in the case of Syria, the largest single source of refugees, around 6% of these are graduates, a large majority with prior professional experience before being forced to flee. This means among this national group alone there are over 5,000 professionals who might be able to contribute key professional skills and experience to their host countries. Best current estimates are that among all national groups about 15,000 people fall into the category of highly-skilled refugee professionals.

The objectives of this project therefore are:

(a) to identify and articulate, in detailed ways, the profession-relevant communicative, interactional and intercultural needs of highly-skilled refugees which would enable them to find employment in the professional domain for which they are qualified

(b) to identify and articulate the training and skill-development needs of educators, agency professionals, and employment consultants, working with highly-skilled refugees

(c) to produce communication, interactional and professional-oriented intercultural competence-focused teaching and learning materials for refugees, educators, and employment agency staff.

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Products

The project developed a toolkit comprised of two training modules:

  • One aimed at highly skilled refugees: 'Professional intercultural communicative competence for work and life’,
  • The second aimed at volunteer teachers: 'Teaching professional intercultural communicative competence’.

The toolkit is designed in such a way, that it can be adapted to target groups in any EU country. 

The toolkit is made up of a number of units. These can be downloaded below. Module A consists of units for teachers, Module B resources for students or those who do not have access to classes and choose to study independently. The themes are: finding, applying and starting a new job.

Download the Toolkit for free on http://cslw.eu/toolkit/

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Site and social media

The project Critical Skills for Life and Work has its own website and publishes newsletters:

In addition Critical Skills is active on social media:

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