The Mobility Finance Network (MFN) hosted its second webinar in November 2025: “Designing a Win-Win Loan Fund: Incentivizing Worker Retention Through Zero-Interest Training Loans.” Justin Bakule, VP of Impact Investments at Social Finance and a member of the MFN advisory council, shared how the WGU ReNEW Fund is a win-win for nursing students and health care employers. Access the webinar recording here and the slides here.
The Mobility Finance Network is an initiative powered by LaMP that fosters collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and innovation to cultivate financial tools for workers on the move and the businesses that support them. To learn more about the MFN, sign up for announcements here.
In a watershed moment, LaMP’s theory of change served as the core thesis for an article in the Economist. This thesis argues that rotational visas are essential to reconciling the “unstoppable force of demographics” with the “immovable object of politics.” The article cites the rapid expansion of temporary visa programs across Japan, Italy, France, Spain, and even Hungary – with the sharpest increases seen under the most conservative leadership. The article quotes LaMP Co-Founder and Board Chair Lant Pritchett, Advisory Council member Michael Clemens, and partner Margaret Mugwanja of Silver RayHR. A parallel piece in the New York Times featured LaMP partner GATI Foundation on India’s leadership to build the globally mobile workforce that will move through these visas.
Read the full Economist article here and the New York Times article here.
At LaMP, we work to dramatically increase the scale and quality of labor mobility, helping workers from low-income countries to access quality jobs across borders and businesses in high-income countries to address deepening labor shortages. A recent media piece featured our work translating this vision into reality.
LaMP’s Kenya-Japan mobility program was featured on TV-Asahi, a national television channel in Japan, as part of a longer documentary piece exploring Africa as the next frontier of labor migration for Japan. In a country where sales of baby diapers have been outstripped by sales of adult diapers, Japan is recognizing the need to open to a wider range of young workers to maintain its workforce.
The worker featured in the thumbnail is George – a Kenyan worker going through the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) pathway through the mobility program spearheaded by LaMP. George and two fellow workers will be some of the first 3 Africans to go through the TITP. They are following 3 others who have gone through the Gijinkoku (high-skilled pathway) and will be followed by several others in the program going through the Specified Skills Visa.
You can see our team in action here and watch the full documentary here.
LaMP is exploring the design of a cross-border livelihoods program that connects South Africa’s underemployed youth with Germany’s growing labor shortages.
This project builds on the track record of two South African organizations with deep experience in catalyzing inclusive employment. Together with LaMP, these partners bring the credibility, experience and networks needed to design a fair and scalable South Africa–Germany labor mobility pathway.
This demographic complementarity creates a powerful opportunity: to connect South Africa’s young, motivated workforce with Germany’s demand for skilled talent through a structured, rights-respecting migration pathway.
Photo by Adrian Brand on Unsplash.
What We Learned in a Collaboration-Focused Visit to Germany
In May 2025, our delegation of partners met with policymakers, recruiters, employers, chambers of commerce, language providers, and diaspora networks in Germany. Several clear insights emerged:
Language is the critical enabler. Across every meeting, German language proficiency (typically B1–B2) was highlighted as the foundation of success—for workplace safety, technical training, and social integration. Without robust, scalable language preparation in South Africa, pathways will fail to take off.
Employer appetite is real but uneven. The healthcare sector is most prepared to recruit international talent. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), while facing the sharpest shortages, often lack the resources to manage recruitment, onboarding, and integration of foreign workers. By contrast, some large firms have strong in-house training systems and domestic pipelines, and so for now show less appetite to recruit apprentices or junior talent from abroad.
Shared-cost models are essential. Employers are reluctant to bear all pre-departure costs (especially for language training), but candidates cannot shoulder them alone. Shared financing—spanning employers, recruitment and language actors, and possibly candidates—will be critical for equity, scale, and sustainability.
Integration goes beyond the workplace. Housing, mentorship, cultural orientation, and anti-discrimination safeguards must be built into program design. SMEs, given their size and capacity, will need external support to ensure successful integration.
South Africa is on the radar—but unproven. Stakeholders expressed openness to South Africa as a source country but emphasized that the country needs to demonstrate strong ecosystems for selection, training, and support of workers.
From Insight to Action
Based on these learnings, our consortium is now working towards a focused pilot in sectors where demand is high and employer receptiveness is strong – such as nursing assistants or selected skilled trades. Key priorities include:
Scaling high-quality language training in South Africa, with clear progression benchmarks and early exit points for candidates unable to meet requirements.
Designing sustainable financing solutions that blend employer, worker, and donor contributions while keeping access equitable for workers from different backgrounds.
Building an end-to-end ecosystem spanning recruitment, training, visa processing, integration, and retention—with carefully selected partners at each stage.
Addressing inclusion and perception risks by embedding intercultural training, community sensitization, and anti-discrimination safeguards.
Why This Matters
This venture is about more than filling vacancies in Germany. It is about demonstrating that migration can be designed as a win-win solution, providing pathways for South African youth to access quality training and jobs abroad while meeting critical labor needs in Germany. If successful, it will serve as a proof point that structured, ethical, and scalable labor mobility is possible between African countries and Europe.
The one-pager below provides key information about a workshop facilitated by LaMP in 2025 on the “Learn, Earn, Return” model of labor mobility. It explores how the creation of a professional, economically efficient, and just global labor mobility industry can help people safely migrate to work for years at a time, but return home with profits and new skills.
NPR’s Population Shift series examines how declining birth rates are reshaping the global economy, with families worldwide having fewer children. They interviewed LaMP’s Co-Founder and Research Director, Lant Pritchett, who explained that this demographic shift is challenging assumptions about economic growth that evolved during an era of rapid population increases. He warned that we’re entering uncharted territory, since we lack historical examples of countries navigating dramatic demographic decline.
LaMP is exploring the design of a cross-border livelihoods program that connects South Africa’s underemployed youth with Germany’s growing labor shortages.
This project builds on the track record of two South African organizations with deep experience in catalyzing inclusive employment. Together with LaMP, these partners bring the credibility, experience and networks needed to design a fair and scalable South Africa–Germany labor mobility pathway.
This demographic complementarity creates a powerful opportunity: to connect South Africa’s young, motivated workforce with Germany’s demand for skilled talent through a structured, rights-respecting migration pathway.
Photo by Adrian Brand on Unsplash.
What We Learned in a Collaboration-Focused Visit to Germany
In May 2025, our delegation of partners met with policymakers, recruiters, employers, chambers of commerce, language providers, and diaspora networks in Germany. Several clear insights emerged:
Language is the critical enabler. Across every meeting, German language proficiency (typically B1–B2) was highlighted as the foundation of success—for workplace safety, technical training, and social integration. Without robust, scalable language preparation in South Africa, pathways will fail to take off.
Employer appetite is real but uneven. The healthcare sector is most prepared to recruit international talent. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), while facing the sharpest shortages, often lack the resources to manage recruitment, onboarding, and integration of foreign workers. By contrast, some large firms have strong in-house training systems and domestic pipelines, and so for now show less appetite to recruit apprentices or junior talent from abroad.
Shared-cost models are essential. Employers are reluctant to bear all pre-departure costs (especially for language training), but candidates cannot shoulder them alone. Shared financing—spanning employers, recruitment and language actors, and possibly candidates—will be critical for equity, scale, and sustainability.
Integration goes beyond the workplace. Housing, mentorship, cultural orientation, and anti-discrimination safeguards must be built into program design. SMEs, given their size and capacity, will need external support to ensure successful integration.
South Africa is on the radar—but unproven. Stakeholders expressed openness to South Africa as a source country but emphasized that the country needs to demonstrate strong ecosystems for selection, training, and support of workers.
From Insight to Action
Based on these learnings, our consortium is now working towards a focused pilot in sectors where demand is high and employer receptiveness is strong – such as nursing assistants or selected skilled trades. Key priorities include:
Scaling high-quality language training in South Africa, with clear progression benchmarks and early exit points for candidates unable to meet requirements.
Designing sustainable financing solutions that blend employer, worker, and donor contributions while keeping access equitable for workers from different backgrounds.
Building an end-to-end ecosystem spanning recruitment, training, visa processing, integration, and retention—with carefully selected partners at each stage.
Addressing inclusion and perception risks by embedding intercultural training, community sensitization, and anti-discrimination safeguards.
Why This Matters
This venture is about more than filling vacancies in Germany. It is about demonstrating that migration can be designed as a win-win solution, providing pathways for South African youth to access quality training and jobs abroad while meeting critical labor needs in Germany. If successful, it will serve as a proof point that structured, ethical, and scalable labor mobility is possible between African countries and Europe.
Lant Pritchett, LaMP’s Co-Founder and Research Director, argued for reimagining labor mobility as a development strategy. Speaking at Devex Impact House during the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings, he highlighted the massive aging problem facing high-income countries and emphasized that facilitating migration to high-productivity settings can increase workers’ earnings fivefold—far exceeding traditional development interventions that might boost wages by only 10%. He called for orderly migration pathways and programs that help lower-income countries effectively recruit, prepare, and place workers, positioning labor mobility as one of the most powerful poverty reduction tools available.
Read the full Devex article here and watch the complete video here.
LaMP is exploring the design of a cross-border livelihoods program that connects South Africa’s underemployed youth with Germany’s growing labor shortages.
This project builds on the track record of two South African organizations with deep experience in catalyzing inclusive employment. Together with LaMP, these partners bring the credibility, experience and networks needed to design a fair and scalable South Africa–Germany labor mobility pathway.
This demographic complementarity creates a powerful opportunity: to connect South Africa’s young, motivated workforce with Germany’s demand for skilled talent through a structured, rights-respecting migration pathway.
Photo by Adrian Brand on Unsplash.
What We Learned in a Collaboration-Focused Visit to Germany
In May 2025, our delegation of partners met with policymakers, recruiters, employers, chambers of commerce, language providers, and diaspora networks in Germany. Several clear insights emerged:
Language is the critical enabler. Across every meeting, German language proficiency (typically B1–B2) was highlighted as the foundation of success—for workplace safety, technical training, and social integration. Without robust, scalable language preparation in South Africa, pathways will fail to take off.
Employer appetite is real but uneven. The healthcare sector is most prepared to recruit international talent. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), while facing the sharpest shortages, often lack the resources to manage recruitment, onboarding, and integration of foreign workers. By contrast, some large firms have strong in-house training systems and domestic pipelines, and so for now show less appetite to recruit apprentices or junior talent from abroad.
Shared-cost models are essential. Employers are reluctant to bear all pre-departure costs (especially for language training), but candidates cannot shoulder them alone. Shared financing—spanning employers, recruitment and language actors, and possibly candidates—will be critical for equity, scale, and sustainability.
Integration goes beyond the workplace. Housing, mentorship, cultural orientation, and anti-discrimination safeguards must be built into program design. SMEs, given their size and capacity, will need external support to ensure successful integration.
South Africa is on the radar—but unproven. Stakeholders expressed openness to South Africa as a source country but emphasized that the country needs to demonstrate strong ecosystems for selection, training, and support of workers.
From Insight to Action
Based on these learnings, our consortium is now working towards a focused pilot in sectors where demand is high and employer receptiveness is strong – such as nursing assistants or selected skilled trades. Key priorities include:
Scaling high-quality language training in South Africa, with clear progression benchmarks and early exit points for candidates unable to meet requirements.
Designing sustainable financing solutions that blend employer, worker, and donor contributions while keeping access equitable for workers from different backgrounds.
Building an end-to-end ecosystem spanning recruitment, training, visa processing, integration, and retention—with carefully selected partners at each stage.
Addressing inclusion and perception risks by embedding intercultural training, community sensitization, and anti-discrimination safeguards.
Why This Matters
This venture is about more than filling vacancies in Germany. It is about demonstrating that migration can be designed as a win-win solution, providing pathways for South African youth to access quality training and jobs abroad while meeting critical labor needs in Germany. If successful, it will serve as a proof point that structured, ethical, and scalable labor mobility is possible between African countries and Europe.
The Immigration White Paper, released on 12 May 2025, outlined a strategy to reduce net migration to the UK. The paper took particular aim at the social care sector, pledging to end overseas recruitment as of 22 July 2025.[i] The White Paper findings emphasized that the social care visa scheme requires fundamental changes to resolve:
The minimal oversight of sponsorship licenses which permitted at least 470 unqualified or fraudulent providers to recruit workers from abroad;
The lack of grievance response mechanisms for workers to report abuse and illegal fees, allowing unscrupulous actors to carry on for far longer than they should; and
The limited support and significant barriers for foreign workers to exercise their right to change employers on an existing visa when dismissed or in a dangerous working environment.
We write this open letter following a wide consultation process with private sector, civil society, and research institute actors across the UK Social Care sector. We agree that these challenges must be addressed. We also believe that eliminating the social care visa scheme, and solely prioritizing domestic workforce training, will not be effective or sufficient approaches to resolving these issues.
Social care is one of the most frequently used and understaffed labour sectors in the UK. A multi-decade study found that at some point in their lives, two-thirds of UK adults have been or will be carers of a loved one.[ii] The UK’s more than 1.59 million professional social carers help reduce that burden by supporting the unpaid caregiving of individuals responsible for the wellbeing of children, elders, and individuals with physical and mental disabilities.[iii]
Yet, despite social care’s ubiquity, the sector faces substantial labour shortages. In early 2025, Care England reported around 131,000 care sector vacancies.[iv] The Health Foundation has also estimated that these shortages will only grow. From 2020-2030, more than 627,000 additional social care staff will be needed to support an aging UK population.[v] To fill this gap, currently about 32 percent of all UK social care professionals are migrant workers.[vi]
We support the government’s objective to invest in a skilled domestic workforce and to target qualified labour migration pathways to fair and responsive levels. However, in the social care sector, this will take time, and domestic workers alone might never be able to fully address the market needs as the social care sector grows with an aging UK population. As such, the UK should design a care visa scheme that is selective and responsive to the needs of care providers and care beneficiaries – at least until the domestic workforce can meet the labour needs of the sector.
With this open letter we believe that the Home Office can continue to operate a social care visa scheme that is more controlled, effective, and responsive by integrating the following elements:
Continuing to allow overseas recruitment of social care workers by authorized recruiters by placing social care occupations on the Immigration Salary List and subsequently the Temporary Shortage List.
Developing a robust and coordinated enforcement system by the Fair Work Agency of care providers & recruiters to limit unscrupulous actors’ ability to take advantage of the system in the future.
Expanding the employer change time for workers in the care sector from 2 months (60 days) to 4 months (120 days) to support recently dismissed workers and current care providers seeking to hire care workers already in the UK.
This open letter draws upon the insights gathered through an extensive consultation process and as a preview towards a more comprehensive set of proposals that LaMP is developing in collaboration with public and private stakeholders. We welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter with you in more detail, including pathways to implementation to build a controlled and responsive social care visa scheme.
Yours sincerely,
Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP)
For a PDF version of this open letter, click here.
A LaMP initiative designing complementary labor pathways for migrants, refugees, and displaced populations from Latin America to Spain.
Latin America is home to millions of refugees and displaced persons, due to a complex mix of violence, political instability, economic hardship, and climate related disasters. Many displaced persons are unable to integrate into the formal labor markets where they currently live. Meanwhile, Spain is experiencing significant gaps in their workforce, driven primarily by an aging population and declining birth rates. This is particularly the case in sectors like construction, hospitality, and elderly care. Labor migration programs between Latin America and Spain offer the opportunity to solve both challenges.
LaMP is engaged in a new initiative to design 3-5 feasible labor mobility programs to Spain, targeting displaced and at-risk populations currently residing in four host countries – Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala. The programs designed through this initiative will develop clear and actionable roadmaps for potential implementation during future pilot phases. This includes the identification of key operational partners and the design of tailored financial solutions to facilitate sustainable labor migration pathways.
The near term goal of this initiative is to produce a series of viable demonstration pilots to support cross-border economic opportunities for migrants and displaced people in Latin America. Our long-term vision is that these programs will evolve into large-scale labor migration pathways, helping thousands of Latin American migrants and displaced persons connect to jobs in Spain where their work experience and expertise is most needed.
You can read a short description of the initiative in English and Spanish.
With GuateCooks, “we have the opportunity to learn, to have good experiences, to make money and then to come back [to Guatemala], to see our families again, be with them. And after a certain time to go back again. We have to take advantage of these opportunities,” stated one recent participant in LaMP’s newest project in Guatemala.
What is GuateCooks?
GuateCooks is a 10-month pilot program designed to enable international labor mobility opportunities for Guatemalan cooks. This initiative focuses on temporary labor migration pathways to meet the labor needs of international employers while also allowing participants the flexibility of working abroad while periodically returning to Guatemala to see their families.
The program is designed with three primary pillars in mind. First, participants who are already trained as cooks take a short training course with local training institute partners. The training course is divided into four modules: 1) U.S.-based safety and hygiene protocols, 2) culinary English classes, 3) practical exercises in high-volume kitchens, and 4) professional development and interview preparation. Rather than a beginner-level training course, the GuateCooks modules work to reinforce participants’ already acquired culinary and English skills to accelerate their job readiness specifically for international kitchens.
A second program priority is the generation of employer demand to facilitate job interviews for training course graduates with international recruiters and employers. Finally, the pilot program focuses on sustainability through the exploration of financial solutions to ensure the training course’s long-term financial viability. During these 10 months, we aim to train and place at least 60 Guatemalan cooks in the culinary and hospitality sectors, primarily in the United States. However, in taking a three-part program approach, we are also ensuring the longevity and scalability of this pathway beyond the pilot program’s duration.
Program Progress and First Successes
Launching just four months ago, LaMP has already made significant strides in implementing the GuateCooks program objectives. In September, LaMP attended Guatemala’s National Food Fair (Feria Alimentaria), the largest culinary event in Central America. There, we strengthened relationships with local educational partners, collaborated with international recruiters to sponsor prizes for the Junior Chefs culinary competition, and promoted the program to Guatemala’s network of culinary students and professionals.
The following month, our first group of participants began their training course hosted by INTECAP, Santa Lucia, one of LaMP’s training partners. Institute administrators were excited to collaborate on the GuateCooks project, explaining that: “the course is very positive, it really fills a need in the region. It generates job opportunities for our chefs.”
On November 15, the first 13 Guatemalan cooks graduated from this training course. Participants described the training as very valuable. One participant explained that in GuateCooks “we gained experience. Here, they taught me a lot about improvising. We learned techniques to solve problems quickly because you have to find a way to make things come out well [in the kitchen].”
Overall, the participants were particularly interested in the course to shore up their culinary skills, to practice English, and to be better prepared for job opportunities in the United States. One participant remarked: “Maybe there were things we already knew, but it was a great reinforcement.” In the month following their graduation, participants have had preliminary interviews with international recruiters and anticipate receiving job offers early this year.
Path Forward and Next Steps
These early successes are just the first steps in LaMP’s larger target to develop a sustainable and scalable training-to-jobs pipeline for the international culinary and hospitality industries. In the coming months, we will continue offering the GuateCooks training course with additional culinary training partners throughout Guatemala. The next GuateCooks training program will begin in late January 2025 in collaboration with the Las Margaritas Culinary Institute in Guatemala City.
During the remainder of the pilot program, we will continue to advance the three core program pillars. First, we will scale up the GuateCooks training ecosystem by collaborating directly with new training partners as well as sharing course materials and bolstering the training capacity of our current training partners. We will also continue to increase labor demand through the fostering of new relationships with U.S.-based recruiters and employers. Finally, in the coming six months we will establish a financial assistance mechanism to ensure that the GuateCooks program continues to grow even after the pilot program ends.
Stay tuned for more details about this project as well as other LaMP’s work by signing up for our newsletter and following us on Twitter, Bluesky, and LinkedIn!
If you are interested in learning more about this work or getting involved, feel free to contact us; we’d love to hear from you! For now, thanks to our supporters, partners, and community.
At LaMP, we work to dramatically increase the scale and quality of labor mobility, helping workers from low-income countries to access quality jobs across borders and businesses in high-income countries to address deepening labor shortages. A recent media piece featured our work translating this vision into reality.
