Labor Mobility Partnerships

Lamp increases the scale of existing Labor Mobility pathways primarily by designing new and expanding access to existing migration pathways, creating millions of dollars in increased income for workers born in low-income countries and their families, and addressing severe Labor needs in high- income countries. Traditional migration policies in high-income countries often exclude workers who could meet the critical Labor needs in trade and service sectors, as immigration policies are skewed to prioritize workers with advance degrees. Lamp takes an occupational approach to creating and improving migration programs by bridging the needs of employing industries in high-income countries with those of core-skilled workers in low-income countries. We accomplish this by incubating innovative and market-compatible solutions to common challenges preventing employers and workers from utilizing existing unfilled visas (such as language and vocational skills training, easy-to-navigate migration processes, job matching, and access to capital). By demonstrating the power of movement to catalyze shared prosperity in specific sectors and corridors, we provide a blueprint for replication and policy change in other contexts. In cases where Labor shortages cannot be addressed through existing visas, lamp works alongside advocacy groups and sending and receiving governments around the world to move towards needed policy and regulatory changes. The following are three primary examples of this work from 2023: -establishing a project training workers in guatemala for jobs in the cruise industry, in partnership with the government of guatemala, local training institutes, and the cruise industry. The training includes preparing for life at sea, english for the cruise industry, hospitality, and safety. The pilot is intended to pave the way for a larger project expected to scale these services across the region, ultimately connecting latin american workers with the 150,000 jobs cruise employers need filled. -designing a global skills partnership for professional care workers between colombia and spain, in partnership with the governments and aged care industries in both countries. Spain will contribute training standards and know-how while colombia will recruit potential candidates and provide needed personnel and infrastructure. Graduates would choose to stay and work in colombia or go to spain, ensuring human capital gains for both countries. -designing a financial product to facilitate access to german language training. This program developed a systemic solution to support prospective indian migrants' access to german language training and subsequent Labor opportunities in germany, increasing their wages 4-10 fold. We work with government and industry stakeholders from india and germany to attract appropriate capital partners and financial institutions to develop a guarantee fund that bridges the financing gap for lower-income indian workers to access german language training prior to employment abroad, shifting the financial burden and roi of investments in language training. These projects and others in 2023 were supported by the western union foundation, howard buffet foundation, schmidt futures and deutsche gesellschaft fr internationale zusammenarbeit.

Lamp improves the quality of existing Labor Mobility pathways primarily by professionalizing the recruitment industry, improving transparency, and dramatically reducing risks of debt bondage for migrant workers. Responsible recruitment gives workers access to well-paid, rights- respecting jobs abroad while mitigating the risks they face in the migration process. It further provides businesses with access to a steady pool of highly reliable workers that will make it easier to increase productivity gains. Historically, however, the recruitment practices in many migration corridors are unethical and rife with fraud, forcing workers into severe debt or forced Labor, driven by perverse incentives built into the design. To improve the quality of recruitment, lamp tailors each project to the realities of each corridor and sector where we work. In some cases, we support by working with existing market players on cost-effective ways to adopt responsible practices or incentivize the transition. In other cases, we help seed a new industry of responsible actors or bolster the delivery capacity and market share of existing ones. In all cases, we seek solutions that acknowledge and help further the interests of everyone at the table - buyers, employers, recruiters, and workers - so that responsible recruitment can be sustained in the long run. Additionally, we recognize that information asymmetries-both in the information provided to workers and about workers' experiences-is a key driver of the risks migrant workers face. To address this, we build tech- based transparency tools that provide visibility into migrant recruitment and employment conditions. We design these tools to be cost-effective in order to deploy them at a large scale, and have used them both to monitor recruitment conditions with committed partners and to elevate migrant voices when making policy and program design choices. Moreover, as we design financial products to unlock migration at scale, we take a critical eye to issues of how financial products influence quality. Specifically, we are tackling the issue of debt bondage in tandem with increasing worker opportunity and agency through new financial product designs. Historically, migrant-focused debt has earned a reputation for exploitative practices; it has been characterized by informal agreements with bad actors, usury, poorly designed credit products, and information asymmetries. These are among the reasons why workers fall into debt bondage or, at a minimum, fail to reach the promise of a higher net income while working abroad. We develop financial products that alter the distribution and timing of costs associated with the migration process - whether through insurance systems, working capital for recruiters, or skilling loans to workers, to expand access to migration opportunities across a wider income distribution while minimizing the risks migrants face. The following are three primary examples of this work from 2023: -working in the largest guest-worker program in the oecd (the us h-2a program) to address issues around worker vulnerability and exploitation that emerge during the first mile recruitment process. "first mile" refers to the practices and experiences occurring in the worker's country of origin and is the most informal and least regulated part of recruitment. Lamp is coordinating key players to build a market-viable responsible recruitment industry in mexico and central america and working closely with the largest players in the market to identify levers to strengthen responsible practice in recruitment. In 2023, lamp helped establish the guatemalan responsible recruitment association (garex), the first association of its kind in latin america. Garex aims to create a platform for responsible recruitment agencies to professionalize and differentiate within the market, develop mutual accountability among members, and address systemic inefficiencies that hamper guatemalan workers' access to international employment opportunities. -developing cost-effective tools to bring transparency into recruitment conditions. The lamp team launched an h-2a worker voice survey - a project aimed at enhancing the recruitment process for h-2a workers. Nearly 10,000 h-2a workers were surveyed through this program, which lamp expects to scale to 20,000 in the coming year. Additionally, since little evidence exists on the experience of foreign-born workers in aged care, lamp aims to expand the knowledge by conducting a global survey among foreign workers in the sector. The team has analyzed the initial results and is now expanding the distribution of the survey to more foreign aged care workers in various host countries around the world. Ultimately, lamp plans to conduct a global study that would support foreign worker voices across sectors and corridors. -designing a menu of centralized/decentralized and private/public financing options for the papua new guinea government to cover first mile recruitment costs for workers, which are currently the biggest hurdle to scale access to the pacific australia labour Mobility (palm) scheme. These projects and others in 2023 were supported by schmidt futures, walmart foundation, and the australian government department of foreign affairs and trade.