Research project Migrant Preparatory Training and the Shaping Circular Migration between Ethiopia and the Gulf States

Government-regulated training is part of an expanding migration infrastructure that prepares migrants for work abroad, while aiming to shape their aspirations and channel them into specific labor sectors in destination countries.

Importantly, these training programs are becoming formalized through policy transfers from mature sending countries, most notably the Philippines, to countries such as Ethiopia, which is currently developing the most ambitious labor deployment program on the African continent. This project takes the circulation and implementation of these training programs as an empirical entry-point for understanding how the recruitment, preparation, deployment and channeling of documented low-skilled labor migration is evolving through increasingly sophisticated means. This is of great relevance for understanding the future of labor migration across world, not least to Europe.