Cross Border Jobs Competition - Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP)

Cross-Border Jobs

Startup Competition

Applications open: 24 June – 5 August 2026

For startups supporting workers from South & Southeast Asia to work across borders

We’re looking for innovative startups shaping safer, fairer, and more scalable labor mobility across South and Southeast Asia. If you’re building platforms or services that help workers move, connect, and thrive across borders – we want to hear from you.

Why this matters

South and Southeast Asia are the engine of global labor mobility. Around one in three international migrants worldwide originates from Asia and the Pacific – roughly 24 million people engaged in labor migration across the region. Countries like the Philippines, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Indonesia send millions of workers abroad each year; the Philippines alone saw approximately 2.3 million citizens leave to work overseas in 2023.

Yet formal, safe pathways remain the exception. Meanwhile, ageing OECD economies face acute shortages in construction, hospitality, healthcare, and manufacturing. Abundant talent, rising global demand – and the systems connecting the two remain fragmented, costly, and underinvested. That is the challenge. It is also the opportunity.

The evidence

The concern that emigration depletes talent at home is understandable, but the evidence often tells a different story. When migration works, its benefits ripple outward – better education, healthcare, housing for families; remittances and returning skills for communities.

4–10x

potential income gain for a worker moving from a low- to high-income country in a single year

nurses stayed home for every nurse who left the Philippines to work abroad between 2000–2006. Higher wages abroad spurred local training investment – growing the overall pool, not shrinking it.

Despite its potential, migration across South and Southeast Asia today is often a painful and dangerous journey. The result is not that people stop moving – but that their movement becomes riskier.

How it goes wrong

⊗Exorbitant recruitment fees — sometimes a year’s wages — leaving workers indebted before they begin
⊗Unclear contracts and weak protections
⊗Contract substitution, wage theft, passport confiscation
⊗Exploitation documented

What’s possible

⊙Safer, more transparent, more affordable pathways
⊙Digital recruitment, skills verification, language training
⊙Remittance, destination-country support, reintegration
⊙Ethical platforms already raising the bar

The opportunity

Labor mobility has the potential to become a USD $25B+ industry. With large youth populations in sending countries and demographic pressures mounting in receiving economies, demand for managed labor migration will only grow. Technology can now enable platforms and services to make cross-border work safe, transparent, and fair at scale.

This competition seeks to identify existing solutions, shine a spotlight on innovators tackling systemic barriers, and create momentum for a more transparent and accessible labor mobility ecosystem.

Why now?

Our mission at LaMP is to help move half a billion workers across borders by 2050: reducing poverty, expanding opportunity for blue-collar workers, and addressing the demographically-driven workforce shortages reshaping OECD economies.

Innovation is key. By scaling solutions and identifying and backing the startups building that infrastructure, we believe the barriers to safe, fair, cross-border work can be removed. We first ran the competition in Africa – and the quality and ambition of the solutions we found confirmed what we believed: innovation is everywhere, it just needs to be found, backed, and connected. We’re now turning to South and Southeast Asia – a region that sends millions of workers abroad every year, where the need for better systems is acute, and where the entrepreneurial energy to build them already exists.

We’re looking for startups that:

Facilitate worker mobility across South & Southeast Asian borders or globally, through recruitment, placement, and/or service management.

Offer enabling services focused on the needs of migrants — finance, pre-departure preparation, language training, compliance, housing, remittance, or reintegration support.

Expand existing solutions into the labor mobility space, including skills verification, credential recognition, or worker welfare platforms.

Prizes & Support

The top 3 startups win:

$10,000 grant

Each of the top 3 startups receives a grant to accelerate their work in safe, fair labor mobility.

Benefits

Mentorship from sector experts, visibility across our partner ecosystem, and access to a growing network of founders and practitioners in labor mobility.

Eligibility

Eligible startups must satisfy all of the following conditions:

Offer cross-border labor mobility solutions for workers from South or Southeast Asia, whether within the region or to global destinations
Have a registered business
Be at any stage (including idea/MVP), though some evidence of traction is preferred
Adhere to principles of responsible and ethical labor migration, including safeguarding and fair recruitment standards