The two-day workshop will be a region-wide stocktaking involving academic and civil society representatives from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey stakeholders as well as academics and policy experts from Germany, Greece, Netherlands and the UK. Two of our particular concerns are access to education and transition into the labour market, especially critical for the age group under study the youth, defined as 18-30 years of age. We will focus more specifically on the following topics: economic integration (employment, housing, health), social connections, facilitators (education, language and cultural knowledge, safety and stability), and future plans (further migration, return or settlement into host country). For each theme, we want to locate policy challenges involved, “best practices” already implemented and lessons learnt from current and past policy interventions.
Day one will include a presentation of the project and its preliminary results followed by presentations by participants on their work in relation to the field. Day two will include interactive discussions on the subtopics identified, whereby each participant will bring in opinions from field or experiences in order to inform the discussions.