Learning from the relocation experiences of highly skilled migrants in Lithuania

Problem

Lithuania has ambitions to grow the local advanced production and knowledge-intensive service sectors of the nation’s economy. For further development of the local high-tech industries more foreign highly skilled talents are needed.

Surveys conducted by the Public Employment Service indicate that Lithuanian businesses face a lack of workers as one of their top business development challenges for the past few years. According to a forecast by Unicorns Lithuania, more than 7,000 new employees are expected to join the local digital sector by 2025, particularly in roles related to ICT.

The Ministry of Economy and Innovation plans to create the systematic conditions for attracting, integrating, and retaining the qualified persons required for jobs in high value-added sectors from foreign countries as part of their strategy “To promote the supply of talents and competencies for a Smart Economy”.

Attracting talent for relocation is a competitive field. This is succinctly summarized from an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report “Managing Highly-Skilled Labour Migration: A Comparative Analysis of Migration Policies and Challenges in OECD Countries”: “While high-skilled migrants may be attracted to countries with widely spoken languages and high wages regardless of the obstacles, a country with moderate wages and its own unique language will need to do more than just lower administrative barriers.”

In order to attract foreign talent to Lithuania, it is important to know how to minimize obstacles throughout the migration process. This requires collecting data on successful relocation cases.

Goal

The aim of the project is to reveal the main factors, expectations and personal relocation experiences of high-skilled foreign nationals living in Lithuania.

Project files

Participants

2023/24

Barbora Sharrock