Addressing the Europe-wide shortage of qualified workers in sectors like construction, agriculture or care services, TRAM4DW project aims at improving the labour and social participation of mobile workers in the EU by building preventive counselling capacities and strengthening the right to decent work.

Funded by the Erasmus + programme and under the lead of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg), the project is implemented by a partnership consisting of nine organisations – universities, research centre and NGOs – from five countries: Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Bulgaria and Ukraine.

Mobile workers contribute significantly to the European economy and their impact increases further once they are empowered to achieve their full potential. This requires preventive counselling. A network of transnational hubs tailored to reduce mobile workers’ precarity in Europe will be established in Hamburg, Madrid, Sofia and Kiev. With early prevention measures it will support cross-border labour mobility protecting mobile EU citizens and migrants working with regular status in host countries in the EU from exploitation, discrimination and de-qualification.

The hubs are the project’s flagship initiative and will both provide transnational migrant counselling and train highly specialized advisors on the requirements of labour markets in the context of the rapidly changing conditions of circular migration. A mentor will be assigned to trainees, and they will learn about the latest national and international trends, develop innovative skills, gain practical experience and assist advice seekers. One of their key tasks will be to engage employers with the hub community.

Apart from the establishment of transnational hubs, a variety of training and networking activities will be carried out for the next three years with special emphasis on the creation of new professional profiles linked to the transnational migrant counselling.

These activities will be hybrid and online advanced seminars, workshops and networking events targeted to migration counselling professionals, career and employment advisors, social workers, students and academics, employers, representatives of the social and labour authorities and the civil society.

About the Partnership: TRAM4DW partnership consists of nine organisations – universities, research centre and NGOs – from five countries: Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Bulgaria and Ukraine. These are the project leader Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg); Arbeit und Leben Hamburg (“Work and Life”), a non-profit educational institution jointly supported by the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) and the adult education centres (Volkshochschulen); the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (HU); the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM); the Civic Association for Communication and Education Sophia (ACCESOphia); the Institute for Population and Human Studies attached to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; the Bulgarian Red Cross; the Mariupol State University (MDU) and the All-Ukrainian Association of Companies for International Employment.

Visit the project website here.