Work Permits, Wages and Financial Survival for Non-EU Students
By Rosie Eunsoo Kim & Magdalena Styś | News | June 10, 2026
Cover Illustration: “The non-eu survival guide for part-time work: launch event for the let us werk! project”, 24th April 2026. Alivia Peterli
In conversation with Io Carpiso: Rosie Eunsoo Kim and Magdalena Styś explore the student-initiatives aimed at supporting non-EU peers facing visa struggles when finding a part-time job
Work permits for non-EU students cost €0. Yet, so many employers, in the service sector and in university student-oriented jobs alike, are hesitant or unwilling to offer a stable contract. Combined with the 16-hour-a-week limit on legal work hours and the ever-rising costs of living, the labor market feels particularly hostile for students who hold citizenship from outside of the European Union.
On April 24, the result of months of student effort materialized in the form of a launch event for the let us werk! project. In a packed classroom in the Universiteitsbibliotheek, Io Carpiso and Luxina Jingxuan Guo gave a presentation on the ways of legally finding part-time positions for non-EU students. In addition to practical information about where part-time work can be found, Carpiso and Guo highlighted the 16-hour work cap and clarified the employer’s responsibility for applying for the student work permit.
The Amsterdammer sat down with Carpiso, the main creator of let us werk!, to chat about the inception of the project and the struggle for non-EU students in the job market.
From a whisper network to a structured guide
As of May 2026, let us werk! compiles 100+ workplaces that hire non-EU students, provides tips about obtaining work permits and government allowances, and is being translated into Mandarin and Vietnamese. Carpiso’s initial inspiration was derived from her mother’s anecdote of “…how Filipino migrants helped each other adjust to living abroad and working abroad.”
“She would tell me about how underneath church pews in Japan and Korea, Filipinos would paste sticky notes where they would write about which families would hire Filipinos and which are abusive. These kinds of networks kept us alive.”
Before it was a public resource, it had humbler beginnings, starting as a Google Map. Carpiso and her friends created the map via a “whisper network,” making a compilation of locations within the city that would hire non-EU students.
“I thought it would be a bit more cohesive if I put all those suggestions in one place […] because I was in the process of looking for part-time work besides my studies and it was very difficult to look for a place that hired non-EU students legally.”
The eventual switch to a larger initiative primarily began for practical reasons: the functionalities of Google Maps did not allow for enough space to write down the various tips that students gave one another about securing part-time work. Looking at the very international community in Amsterdam, Carpiso quickly realized that some common problems emerged across conversations with peers:
“In 2024 and 2025, we were all students in our first year, and we would bitch about two things: the housing crisis or the fact that we can’t get work. […] I realized that our friends are being lied to by managers; they’re being told that it’s too expensive to apply for [a] work permit. I’ve heard of my classmates going to interviews and begging, saying they will pay for their work permits themselves and do all the paperwork just to be allowed to work, and they would still be rejected.”
Before moving to the Netherlands, “[students] are not told about the extreme gravity or how difficult it is to actually get part-time work.” The University of Amsterdam, as an institution that advertises its various English-based programs and stresses its diverse body of staff and students, turns a blind eye to structural disadvantages against students without European citizenship.
Carpiso speaks on a specific example that showcases discrimination in a work setting in a paid research assistant position:
“An egregious example of this is somebody studying a Research Master’s in psychology, getting a research position in the Job Board within the university, a research assistant position that is paid by the university. Then, the head researcher allowed her to work…and she worked for a few weeks.
Eventually, her research supervisor out of nowhere asked her: by the way, do you have a work permit? And when my non-EU student friend said, “No,” her supervisor told her to stop activity immediately. This kind of process wastes people’s time… And it disheartens students when they realize they’re going to be discriminated against in the job market.”
Sustaining a Living in Amsterdam
Even for most jobs on the official UvA JobBoard, which is targeted for UvA students, the JobBoard only accepts applications from Dutch-citizenship holders, Dutch-speakers or is limited to EU-nationals. As of 2025, 36% of UvA students have an international background; these job prospects completely ignore the 13% of Internationals from outside the EEA.
For incoming students of the 2026-2027 academic year in the Faculty of Humanities, institutional fees are approximately 6.5 times more costly than statutory fees. This raises anxiety and stress for students and families who may not have easily been able to access (sufficiently and quickly) the appropriate sum of money and incites uncertainty in students who may have selected UvA specifically because they saw a future in the Netherlands for an indefinite period of time.
In the Netherlands, minimum wage differs depending on age. If you are 21 or older, and are able to work 16 hours a week, the wage totals to €941.44 a month. It is a wage that is less than the monthly rent cost of some student housing, including Student Experience NDSM, The Social Hub West, etc. With tuition, rent, groceries, along with the hundreds of other bills to pay, financial independence is extremely precarious with this rate of income. For non-EU students the cost of living far outpaces the minimum wage.
Carpiso’s first-hand and anecdotal experiences with the UvA in the job-searching process remain bittersweet. She has been working odd jobs at the university — either as a student ambassador or the Vice-Chair of the Humanities Faculty Student Council — since she began her studies in Amsterdam in September 2024, and she refers to them as “great opportunities for non-EU students.” She does, however, have some notes on the UvA’s career-related offerings, particularly on the Job Board.
“I actually applied to two jobs in the Job Board and multiple non-EU students and I agree that it is not a non-EU friendly website. They don’t specify whether they hire non-EU; they simply say they’re hiring any student, but when you go to the process of asking for a work permit, they say, oh, we can’t do that for you.
Nevertheless, Carpiso reiterates that universities should continue to engage with and support students for the sake of their livelihoods as well as their professional career-building:
“…I really do think there’s a place for these institutions [universities] to have these communications with their students because I think they’re liable for us; I think they’re responsible for bringing us here, advertising to us and letting us enroll here. They can’t just let go of our hands when we’re here.”
The future of let us werk!
Throughout let us werk!, Carpiso routinely referred back to its cooperative aspect. She recruited her friends to contribute to the website and the launch event, and she is always on the lookout for volunteers. Her plans for expanding let us werk! include getting more institutional visibility, spreading information about work permits to more employers, and perhaps providing additional translations and widening the scope of the map to other cities, such as the Hague and Rotterdam. Each and every student in the Netherlands should have the right to be accurately informed of the job industry in Amsterdam, and let us werk! plans on continuing to be a reliable source for those needing financial support in this city (and perhaps country, continent, or point in the time-space continuum) riddled by inflation.
When asked if she has any advice for international students in a precarious situation, she circled back to the community-oriented perspective that permeated through her other responses, as well as the project at large:
“If ever you feel disempowered by the institution of migration that is meant to make you feel helpless and small, remember that there is a community around you.”
Rosie Eunsoo Kim & Magdalena Styś are university students’ in Amsterdam. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Amsterdammer.
