This symposium raises and discusses questions related to the acknowledgement and re-assessment of qualifications teachers, who had to flee, have to offer their new countries of residence’s labour market. Currently, teachers from abroad are discussed as an answer to teacher shortage in European countries like Austria and Germany, while they are not really considered in this context in Ireland. Regardless of the potential they provide to address teacher-shortage or not, continuing as a teacher in host societies has been established as a complex and challenging journey for both recently migrated teachers as well as those migration due to economic hardship from e.g. Europe’s South or East (for an international overview Bense 2014; Resch et al. 2019). Concerning Germany more than 11,000 persons who were working in teaching professions (“lehrende Berufe”) in their country of origin applied for asylum in Germany in 2016 (Neske 2017, 9). Between 2014 and 2018, about 5,000 refugee teachers and/or third-country nationals who have completed teacher training and have practical experience lived or were registered in Germany (FDP parliamentary group 2019 based on current data of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees). So far, only 250 persons with citizenship of an asylum country of origin are employed as teachers at general or vocational schools (Employment Statistics of the Federal Employment Agency 2018).

Internationally trained teachers enable opportunities for diversity in classrooms and can act as role models for children with diverse cultural backgrounds. The papers will introduce the main challenges, teachers from Syria, Turkey and other countries have to face migrating to EU countries. Against the background of the (political) discourse on the employment of recently immigrated teachers, the panel will focus on the teachers' perspective.

- A special focus will be laid on first-hand accounts of how teachers think about the paradox situation of the very difficult access to the school system as a labour market while schools struggle to sustain due to a lack of staff and high fluctuation in Austria.

- To keep up the hope to find a way back into the teaching profession is central to participants of a requalification programme for refugee teachers in Germany. How these teachers handle their further professionalisation process under insecure conditions is presented in a pre-post interview study.

- Perspective of internationally trained teachers in Ireland, Austria and Germany.

Bense, K. (2016). International teacher mobility and migration: A review and synthesis of the current empirical research and literature. Educational Research review, 17, 37–49. FDP-Fraktion im Bundestag (2019): Antrags zu universitären Vorbereitungskurse für ge-flüchtete Lehrerinnen und Lehrer, Drucksache 19/15898 Neske, M. (2017): Volljährige Asylerstantragsteller in Deutschland im Jahr 2016: Sozial-struktur, Qualifikationsniveau und Berufstätigkeit. BAMF-Kurzanalyse 2, 2017. Nürnberg. Online unter: https://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Publikationen/Kurzanalysen/kurzanalyse8_sozial-komponenten-gesamt2016.pdf?__blob=publicationFile [letzter Zugriff: 24.05.2019]. Proyer, M. (2019): IO1 - Transnational Framework Comparative Analysis of the Adminis-trative Frameworks on the (Re-)Qualification Situation of Internationally Trained Teachers in Austria, Germany and Sweden. Online: Resch, K. et al. (2019): Ambivalenzen der Anerkennung beruflicher Qualifikationen von international ausgebildeten Lehrkräften mit Fluchterfahrung in Österreich unter Berück-sichtigung europaweiter Entwicklungen', SWS-Rundschau, Nr. 3-2019, S. 255-274.