Bilateral agreements on labour migration and exchanges of young professionals

Submitted by admin on Tue, 02/16/2010 - 17:15

Solidarity between France and the country of origin of the immigrants

To date, fourteen concerted migration flow management agreements or agreements governing labour migration have been signed between France and the following countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Congo, Gabon, Mauritius, Russia, Senegal, Tunisia, Cameroon, Lebanon, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia. The first nine have been ratified.

Some of these agreement have a section to facilitate the professional mobility of young people. Furthermore, seven countries have signed an agreement focusing solely on young professionals’ exchanges: Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, the United States, Morocco, New Zealand, Romania.

France is committed to joint reflection with the primary countries of origin to establish co-operative management of economic migration.

These agreements that have been signed mainly aim to facilitate obtaining residence permits for employees and temporary workers by determining a number of occupations for each country for which the employment situation is not applicable. To the national list of the 30 shortage occupations, we can add, for some agreements, negotiated lists with the various partner Countries.

The agreements also have the objective of promoting the "skills and talents" provision by establishing the number of residence permits per country that may be issued with quotas ranging from 100 to 1500 CCTSkills and Talents Permits per year.

Additionally, they attempt to facilitate mobility for young professionals and most (with the exception of Burkina Faso that does not account for this program and Gabon, which must negotiate it in a special agreement) integrate the already existing agreements or set out specific procedures for this category.

Lastly, student access to work has been improved. The temporary residence permit for exercising an occupation, or seeking an occupation, at the end of one's studies was extended from 6 to 9 months, especially for citizens of Congo, Gabon, Cameroon, and Cape Verde, or even 12 months within the agreements with Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.

It is also important to note that the agreement signed between France and Mauritius entitled, "agreement on Residence and the Circular Migration of professionals" created the special "immigration and development" visa, valid for 15 months.

Here, you may view the texts of all of the agreements that have already been ratified and the lists of negotiated occupations (see the sheet Shortage occupations) :

Bilateral migration flow agreements or agreements on labour migration:

Young professionals’ exchange agreements:

ARGENTINA