Crossing borders – getting work: Skilled migrants' gendered labour market participation in Norway

Abstract

It is common in the international migration community to see migrant doctors working as taxi drivers. The term ‘brain waste’ has been used to describe the phenomenon of migrants taking unskilled jobs despite having professional qualifications. As Norway has both a shortage of skilled workers and underemployment among skilled migrants, especially among health care workers, this appears as a prima facie evidence of brain waste. However, can brain waste be assumed or is there a need to dig further into the phenomenon to understand the mismatch between qualifications and work? The author's research question concerns why highly skilled migrants face problems in securing work when they cross borders. To address the question, the study draws upon interviews with representatives from local recruitment agencies and skilled migrants, all of whom lived in Tromsø, the largest city in Northern Norway. The main findings demonstrate that several ongoing gendered deskilling processes and negotiations are vital for understanding skilled migrants' labour market participation. Further, concepts such as human capital and time geography can be used to connect mobile individuals and social contexts, and are particularly useful for explaining formal, social, and cultural mechanisms that occur in various sectors of the labour market.

Keywords:

• brain waste
• health sector
• labour market
• recruitment
• skilled migration

Notes

1 During the period 2009–2010, both I and my colleague Marit Aure observed and interviewed a group of 17 participants in the recruitment programme (Fossland & Aure 2011). Later in 2010, I conducted follow-up interviews with 14 migrants from the same group of participants, and in addition I interviewed 9 members of staff from nine recruitment agencies. In the period 2011–2012, I interviewed a new (second) group of skilled migrants (13 health care workers) that I contacted independently.

2 All participants’ names are pseudonyms.

3 All participants’ quotes originally in Norwegian have been translated into English by the author.