Immigration controls creating highly skilled precarious workers: South American migrant women's professional trajectories in the care and academic sectors

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Ressource 1Download: 03 Luna.Seminario_GENDER_AND_MIGRATION.pdf (1999.20 [Ko])
State: Public
Version: Author's accepted manuscript
Serval ID
serval:BIB_268A22AFFEFD
Type
A part of a book
Publication sub-type
Chapter: chapter ou part
Collection
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Title
Immigration controls creating highly skilled precarious workers: South American migrant women's professional trajectories in the care and academic sectors
Title of the book
Gender and Migration: a Gender-Sensitive Approach to Migration Dynamics
Author(s)
Seminario Luna Romina
Publisher
Leuven University Press
Address of publication
Leuven, Belgium
ISBN
9789462701632
Publication state
Published
Issued date
06/12/2018
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Editor
Timmerman Christiane , Fonseca Maria Lucinda, Van Praag  Lore , Pereira Sonia
Series
CEMIS Migration and Intercultural Studies
Chapter
3
Pages
63-94
Language
english
Abstract
The aim of this article is to investigate the different types of il/legalities that Swiss immigration controls produce and their impact on the professional trajectories of highly skilled migrant men and women from South America. Although I will consider the issue of migrants having to validate their foreign educational credentials and professional experiences, my main interest lies in the valuing of degrees obtained in Swiss higher education (HE) institutions. In fact, reskilling in the sense of achieving post-obligatory education in the host country has been considered as improving the labour market participation of highly skilled migrants. However, I will focus here on the ways in which particular immigration controls such as the creation of categories of entry, the influencing of employment relations, and the institutionalisation of uncertainty (Anderson, 2010) mediate the employment conditions of highly skilled migrants with Swiss degrees. I will thus explore precariousness (Anderson, 2010) among highly skilled South American men and women working in gendered and foreign-based employment sectors such as care and academia. The Swiss migration regime creates il/ legalities according to the independent (student or worker) or dependent (family reunification) way of obtaining a residence permit. Drawing on a life course perspective, immigration controls reduce the value of Swiss degrees by reducing immigrants’ legal opportunities to work to a dependent legal situation or a no-permit situation. A hierarchy of professions, family caregiving norms and nationality stereotypes influences the assessing of their skills. These finding stress the interest of investigating skills as a relational concept that is constructed and valued by key actors in a transnational space in order to fashion highly skilled migrants as precarious workers.
Keywords
Life-course, care workers, Switzerland, Latin American migration
Create date
07/12/2018 9:10
Last modification date
21/08/2019 6:08
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