How to advance inclusion and prosperity in European cities

In 2019 we had a successful partnership with Welcoming international. Welcoming International is part of Welcoming America, a non-profit organisation which aims at creating an inclusive society, starting on the local level including all sectors. They connect and support actors and institutions all around the world which are advancing inclusion. We met through our fantastic partner “Hello Europe” and did a report together on best practices on inclusion and increased prosperity among migrants. We looked into the economic output of the foreign population – refugees, EU-migrants and non-EU migrants.

Fostering entrepreneurship and labour market inclusion can be essential to tackle significant challenges such as lower labour market participation among migrants. Not to mention populism which has been rising in the past years reinforcing the negative picture on migration as well as future challenges of migration such as the growing number of climate refugees requiring good migration policies and infrastructures. Numbers show that migrant founders are essential when it comes to overcoming these challenges as they tackle innovation, take risks, integrate and can fuel economic growth. Therefore, supporting migrant founders can lead to higher labour participation, more robust economic growth and better inclusion.

The situation in Europe shows that countries with a light-touch regulatory approach and an entrepreneurial population see more jobs created by migrant founders. Therefore, it is important to ease entrepreneurship and starting a business. As national regulations are usually hard to change, there is a lot of potential on the municipal level.

From our research, we found the following qualities prosperous cities have in common:

–        A systematic approach to finding talent

–        A system for verifying and matching talent with business ecosystems

–        Mentorship and follow-up

The majority of cities we have scanned have parts of this model in place – but lack a crucial factor: an efficient and precise flow of information between the sectors.