Professional intercultural communicative competence and labour market integration among highly-educated refugees in the Netherlands.

Keywords: highly-educated refugees; intercultural communication; intercultural communicative competence; labour market integration; resilience; hochqualifizierte geflüchtete Menschen; interkulturelle Kommunikation; interkulturelle Kommunikationskompetenz; Integration in den Arbeitsmarkt; Resilienz; refugiados altamente calificados; comunicación intercultural; competencia comunicativa intercultural; integración al mercado laboral; resiliencia EN highly-educated refugees intercultural communication intercultural communicative competence labour market integration resilience hochqualifizierte geflüchtete Menschen interkulturelle Kommunikation interkulturelle Kommunikationskompetenz Integration in den Arbeitsmarkt Resilienz ES refugiados altamente calificados comunicación intercultural competencia comunicativa intercultural integración al mercado laboral resiliencia 31 56 26 03/11/22 20220301 NES 220301 1 Introduction As a result of wars, persecution, and human rights violations, there are currently more than 70 million forcibly-displaced people worldwide (United Nations Refugee Agency 2019). Yet while municipalities throughout the Netherlands provide basic support for such refugees, and the newcomers receive instruction in the Dutch language, they are not given any systematic ICC training - and their long-term integration into the labour market is, for the most part, an individual responsibility ([30] et al. 2015). While much more remains to be done, we thus argue that both the explicit teaching of PICC to refugees themselves, and the increased awareness of the importance of PICC among professionals who are supposed to help them, can potentially constitute sensible first steps towards assisting and promoting refugees' labour market integration. However, recent research in the Netherlands and several other EU countries ([6] et al. 2020) indicates that highly-educated refugees face the same challenges as refugees in general. [Extracted from the article]