A person can cross a border with a qualification and enter a workplace where it is never used. They can bring years of experience that a recruitment process does not recognise. They can acquire new abilities while remaining defined by the job they first accepted.
Yet in Malta’s debate about work and migration, one description can overshadow everything else: TCN.
Third-country national is an administrative classification. It tells us that someone is not a citizen of an EU Member State. It does not tell us what they know, what they can do, what they could learn or where they could contribute.
That distinction is more than a matter of language. If we allow a legal category to become a substitute for understanding capability, we weaken the decisions that follow—from recruitment and training to workforce planning and economic policy.
A category can organise a process. It cannot explain a person.
Administrative categories have a purpose. They help institutions determine which rules apply, what documentation is required and how applications should be processed.
The problem begins when those categories travel beyond their purpose.
“TCN” can become shorthand for a type of worker, a presumed level of education or a particular place in the economy. People with different qualifications, experience and ambitions are then discussed as though they form a single workforce category.
They do not.
A nurse, a software developer, a construction tradesperson and a graduate working outside their field may share an immigration classification. That tells us little about the capabilities their jobs require or the abilities they possess.
Three questions need to remain separate:
- What is this person’s legal status?
- What work are they currently doing?
- What are they capable of doing?
Each matters. None answers the others.
A job title is not a complete skills map
The same caution applies to occupations.
A job title describes a role. It does not provide a complete inventory of the person performing it.
Imagine a qualified professional who accepts a service role while learning a language or seeking recognition of their credentials. Their current occupation records where they have entered the labour market. It does not necessarily describe the full extent of their expertise.
The reverse also matters. Someone without a degree may possess substantial technical knowledge, practical judgement and experience acquired through years of work.
This is why a more human approach to workforce intelligence cannot stop at qualifications or occupational labels. It needs to understand what people can demonstrate, which capabilities the work requires and what would enable a better match.
Otherwise, the first job a person accepts risks becoming the only version of them an organisation can see.
Europe’s mismatch problem makes the distinction consequential
This is not simply a theoretical concern.
In 2024, 39.6% of tertiary-educated employed non-EU citizens in the EU worked in occupations classified below tertiary skill level. The corresponding figure was 30.3% for citizens of another EU country and approximately one fifth for nationals.[1]
These are measures of overqualification, not direct assessments of competence. They do not mean that every graduate is ready for every professional vacancy. Nor should the EU figure be presented as a Malta-specific result.
But they reveal a problem that recruitment totals cannot capture: an economy can attract educated people without making full use of their education.
The OECD–European Commission’s integration research also found that holding a host-country qualification was associated with a substantial reduction in the immigrant–native overqualification gap. Recognition, language, local experience and access to professional networks all matter to how qualifications translate into employment.[2]
The implication is uncomfortable but useful. Some capability described as missing may already be present, but difficult to recognise or access.
We may be asking the recruitment question too early
When an organisation cannot fill a role, the immediate question is often: where can we find someone?
Sometimes international recruitment is the right answer. A business may need additional capacity or expertise that is genuinely unavailable.
But there are questions worth asking first.
Have we assessed the capabilities of the people already working here? Are we treating an unfamiliar qualification as an absence of competence? Could a practical assessment reveal relevant experience? Would a targeted bridging programme enable someone to move into the role?
And is the vacancy difficult to fill because the capability is scarce—or because the offer, conditions or progression are uncompetitive?
Cedefop identifies unattractive job offers and weaknesses in human-resource practices among the possible causes of recruitment bottlenecks. A vacancy is therefore a signal to investigate, not a diagnosis in itself.[3]
This does not make employers’ difficulties less real. It makes the response more precise.
Essential work does not need a graduate label to matter
There is another trap to avoid.
Recognising underused qualifications should not imply that service, care, cleaning, construction or support work is somehow beneath the people doing it.
The objective is not to turn every job into a graduate role. It is to ensure that essential work is respected, that competence is recognised and that people are not unnecessarily prevented from progressing.
A person may choose work outside their field. They may value its flexibility, relationships or opportunities. A mismatch indicator cannot explain every individual decision.
The concern is not that everyone must follow a predetermined professional path. It is whether they have a meaningful choice—and whether an organisation can see beyond the role in which they first arrived.
The employer is part of the skills system
Skills debates often place the burden of adaptation on the individual.
Learn the language. Obtain another certificate. Complete another course.
These steps may be necessary. But organisations also have responsibilities.
They need recruitment processes capable of interpreting different backgrounds. Managers need ways to identify expertise that is not immediately visible. Employees need credible routes to demonstrate competence, close specific gaps and progress.
The OECD’s research on immigrant integration places explicit attention on firms and opportunities for workers to move between employers. Outcomes are shaped not only by who workers are, but also by where they work and the opportunities available to them.[4]
A skills strategy should therefore examine both sides of the relationship: the person’s ability to contribute and the organisation’s ability to use that contribution.
From workforce labels to human pathways
For ThinkPeople Nexus, this is where intelligence should become practical.
A more useful workforce map would connect:
- The capabilities a person already possesses.
- The requirements of their current role.
- The capabilities needed for possible next roles.
- The specific gaps that can be addressed.
- The opportunities through which progression becomes achievable.
The purpose is not to create another static profile. It is to turn information into a route.
For one person, that route may involve recognition of a qualification. For another, a language programme, supervised practice or targeted technical training. For someone else, the missing step may be an employer willing to assess experience differently.
The approach also applies to Maltese and other EU workers. Looking beyond labels is not a concession to one group. It is a better way to understand the whole workforce.
Better distinctions, better decisions
Malta still needs to make decisions about migration, infrastructure and the pace of economic growth. Recognising individual capability does not remove those responsibilities.
It improves the basis on which they are exercised.
Immigration status should inform the legal process. Occupational data should help explain the structure of employment. Qualifications should inform an assessment of learning. Demonstrated skills and experience should help establish what someone can contribute.
When these distinctions disappear, people become easier to count but harder to understand.
TCN is not a skills category. It should not become a ceiling on how we see a person.
The more useful question—for employers, institutions and the economy—is what becomes possible when we look beyond it.
Jesmond Saliba
Founder, ThinkPeople Nexus