On inclusion, decision-making, and what it really means to involve international talent.
There's a phrase I hear quite often when I talk about the challenges internationals face in the Netherlands: “I hear you.”
It's a polite response. And I believe people usually mean it. But lately, I've been asking myself a different question: Is being heard enough?
I don't just want someone to listen to my experience. I want to know whether I can also help define the problem, shape the solutions, influence priorities, and have a say in how resources are used to address these challenges.
In other words, is the door to the decision-making room actually open?
Being in the room isn't the same as having a say
We talk a lot about attracting and retaining international talent, diversity, inclusion, and belonging.
Cities, universities, employers, and other organisations are doing important work in these areas. Many have developed programmes to attract skilled people, support their careers, help them settle in, and strengthen local economies.
I think much of this work is valuable. But there's a question I keep coming back to: How much of this work is being done with internationals, and how much is being done for them?
And I don't just mean having a few international employees in an organisation. I think we need to look at three different things.
Presence: Are people with different backgrounds and experiences actually part of the teams, meetings, and organisations involved?
Influence: Can they change how a problem is understood, what gets prioritised, how solutions are designed, or what success looks like?
Decision-making power and accountability: Do they have a clear way to influence decisions and the use of resources? Can they see what happened to their input, and why their ideas were accepted or rejected?
These are not the same thing.
An organisation can have a very international team while its main priorities are still decided by a small group of institutional partners. That doesn't automatically mean those decisions are wrong, or that international team members have no influence.
But it does mean that having a diverse team isn't enough to tell us how inclusive the decision-making process really is.
Having international employees, understanding different international experiences, and sharing decision-making power are three different things.
There is no single international experience
Another thing I often notice is how easily we talk about “internationals” as if we're all part of one group with similar needs.
We're not.
The experience of an EU citizen can be very different from that of someone outside the EU whose right to live and work here depends on a residence permit.
An international student faces different challenges from someone working under a Highly Skilled Migrant permit.
An independent international entrepreneur may deal with problems that someone employed by a large company, with HR and relocation support, never has to think about.
Then there are international graduates looking for their first job, partners who moved here with their families, and people trying to rebuild their professional networks in a new country.
Even two people from the same country can have very different experiences depending on their residence status, financial situation, social connections, and access to support.
So the question isn't simply whether internationals are involved.
Which internationals are involved? Whose experiences do they bring? At what stage do they participate? And how much influence do they actually have?
I don't represent every international person just because I'm an international founder myself.
And that's exactly the point. We need ways for different experiences to be part of the conversation, rather than assuming that one or two international voices can speak for everyone.
Who gets a seat at the table?
Imagine a region developing a strategy to attract and retain international talent. It's natural for local government, universities, employers, and economic development organisations to be involved.
They have important knowledge, responsibilities, and resources. But what about people who don't belong to any of those institutions?
If you need to represent an organisation to get a seat at the table, how does someone outside that network take part in defining the problem?
Think about an independent international entrepreneur who works directly on the challenges internationals face. Someone who isn't employed by a university, doesn't represent a major employer, and isn't part of the established network of partner organisations.
How does that person get involved? Do they need to get a job at one of those institutions first? Do they have to know the right people? Wait for a personal invitation? Or is their role limited to answering surveys, attending consultation meetings, and sharing their experiences when someone asks?
Is there a clear and accessible way for independent people to take part in shaping decisions?
For me, this isn't just a theoretical question. As someone building initiatives around the challenges of living and working in the Netherlands, I'd like to contribute to more than conversations about what's going wrong.
I'd like to help shape what happens next. Not necessarily as a representative of a large organisation, but as someone with lived experience and practical knowledge of part of the problem. And I believe there should be a way for people like me to do that.
What if we're solving different parts of the same problem?
This brings me to another thought. Attracting, supporting, and retaining international talent is not just a recruitment or regional marketing challenge.
It's connected to housing, immigration rules, employment, language, education, family life, social relationships, entrepreneurship, stability, and a sense of belonging. These problems are connected. Improving one part doesn't necessarily solve the others.
Different organisations naturally see different parts of the picture.
For an employer, the problem might be a shortage of skilled workers.
For a university, it might be graduates leaving the region.
For a municipality, it might be economic growth and keeping the region attractive.
For a service provider, it might be helping people find information and support.
But for the international person living through all of this, the question might be something much more personal: Can I actually build a stable, meaningful life here?
This reminds me of Rumi's story of the elephant in the dark. Different people touch different parts of an elephant. Each describes what they feel. Their descriptions may be correct, based on what they can reach. But none of them has the full picture.
I think something similar can happen when we try to solve complex social problems. It's not that one organisation is right and the others are wrong.
The more important question is: Whose understanding of the problem becomes the official one? Which solutions receive funding? And which experiences are missing from the picture?
When a problem has so many connected parts, I don't think any single group can fully understand or solve it alone.
That's why meaningful participation needs to begin when we're still defining the problem. Not only after the plans have been made and people are invited to give feedback.
Who decides where the money goes?
This is another part of the conversation that I think deserves more attention.
When public or shared resources are allocated to support international talent, who gets to help decide what matters most?
Are internationals themselves involved in identifying which problems deserve more attention and investment?
Imagine having to choose between spending resources on regional promotion, professional networking, settlement support, entrepreneurship programmes, or activities that help people build social connections.
Who helps make those choices?
Whose experiences are taken into account?
And who is missing from that discussion?
Of course, public budgets come with legal responsibilities. Elected bodies and the organisations responsible for those funds must remain accountable for their decisions. And participation needs to be transparent, including how conflicts of interest are handled.
But I don't see why that should prevent the people affected by these policies from having a real say in defining needs, setting priorities, reviewing proposals, and evaluating results.
There's a big difference between asking people: “What do you think of the programme we've designed?”
And asking them: “What do you think is the most important problem we should be using our resources to solve?”
Those are two very different conversations.
Moving beyond “I hear you”
I don't think this should become a debate about Dutch people versus internationals. Many Dutch professionals, policymakers, and organisations genuinely care about these issues and understand them well.
And being international doesn't automatically make someone an expert on every international experience. That's not what I'm questioning.
What I'm interested in is how participation and decision-making are organised.
Have we created ways for people outside established networks to get involved?
Can they join early enough to influence how problems are defined and which priorities are chosen?
Can they see what happened as a result of their participation?
And can they question decisions when their concerns have not been addressed?
If we want to understand how inclusive our talent initiatives really are, I think we should be asking five questions:
- Who is involved, and whom do they represent? Are they there on behalf of an institution, or to bring the experiences of a particular group into the discussion?
- Where can they actually influence decisions? Are they involved in defining problems, setting priorities, designing solutions, and evaluating results? Or are they mainly invited to provide feedback?
- What has changed because they participated? Can we point to decisions that were different because their voices were included?
- How can people outside established networks get involved? Is there an open, clear, and accessible way to participate, or does it depend on personal connections and invitations?
- When resources are allocated in the name of internationals, how are those internationals involved in deciding what deserves funding?
To me, the answers to these questions tell us much more about inclusion and belonging than the number of international faces in a team photo.
Who is a talent ecosystem really for?
Economic growth is a legitimate and important goal. Attracting skilled people, helping businesses grow, and encouraging international talent to stay can benefit both a region and the people who choose to build their future there.
I don't see those goals as mutually exclusive. But I do think there's a risk when international talent is mainly discussed in terms of its economic value.
We can start seeing people as resources needed by a region, rather than as people with their own needs, ambitions, concerns, and choices.
International talent is not just an economic resource. These are people building their lives.
People who want to take part not only in the labour market, but also in the social, cultural, and economic life of the place they call home.
And if we genuinely care about inclusion and belonging, I think that should also be reflected in how decisions are made.
An inclusive talent ecosystem shouldn't only provide good services and opportunities for internationals. It should also create opportunities for them to help build and shape that ecosystem.
I appreciate being heard. But I think we need to move one step further.
From “I hear you” to “Let's decide together.”
Not because everyone needs to have the final say in every decision. But because the people whose lives are affected should have a meaningful opportunity to shape the decisions being made.
And maybe that's the question we should be asking more often:
Are we simply trying to help internationals find their place in the talent ecosystems we've built, or are we willing to let them help build and shape those ecosystems with us?