Work in Transition: Cultural Capital and Highly Skilled Migrants' Passages into the Labour Market

by Arnd-Michael Nohl, Karin Schittenhelm, Oliver Schmidtke, Anja Weiss

Overview

Despite the fact that many countries target highly skilled migrants for recruitment in the global labour market, few of those migrants are able to take full advantage of their educational and professional qualifications in their new homes. Work in Transition examines this paradox, using extended narrative interviews that focus on the role that cultural capital plays in the labour market.

Comparing the migrant experience in Germany, Canada, and Turkey, Work in Transition shows how migrants develop their cultural capital in order to enter the workforce, as well as how failure to leverage that capital can lead to permanent exclusion from professional positions. Exposing the mechanisms that drive inclusion and exclusion for migrants from a transatlantic comparative perspective, this book provides a unique analytical approach to an increasingly important global issue.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442615687
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	10/31/2014
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.96(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Arnd-Michael Nohl is a professor of Education Science at Helmut-Schmidt-University.
Karin Schittenhelm is a professor of Sociology at the University of Siegen.
Oliver Schmidtke is a professor in the Departments of Political Science and History and Director of the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria.
Anja Weiss is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Table of Contents

List of Tables
List of Figures
Acknowledgements

1. Highly Skilled Migrants: A Puzzling Socioeconomic Reality and a Challenge to Migrations Research
2. The Relational Character of Cultural Capital in Migration
3. Multidimensional Status Passages: Migration, Labour Market Inclusion, and Private Life Domains
4. Aspects of the Multidimensional Status Passage: Phases, Migration Motives, and Cultural Capital among Foreign-trained Migrants in Germany
5. Migration Control and Migrants’ Agency
6. Symbolic Struggles over Cultural Capital: Racial Discrimination and Symbolic Exclusion
7. Up- and Downgrading Cultural Credit: A Cross-Country Comparison
8. Conclusions

Appendix I
Appendix II
Appendix III
References

What People are Saying About This

Harald Bauder

“Work in Transition adds empirical depth and theoretical sophistication to the literature on cultural capital in a labour migration context.”

Eleonore Kofman

“An original and serious advance on research in the field, Work in Transition will appeal both to those interested in the analysis of highly skilled transitions in general and to those particularly attracted by the comparative analysis.”

Editorial Reviews

Work in Transition adds empirical depth and theoretical sophistication to the literature on cultural capital in a labour migration context.”

—Harald Bauder, Director, Ryerson Centre for Immigration and Settlement, Ryerson University

“An original and serious advance on research in the field, Work in Transition will appeal both to those interested in the analysis of highly skilled transitions in general and to those particularly attracted by the comparative analysis.”

—Eleonore Kofman, Professor of Gender, Migration, and Citizenship, School of Law, Middlesex University

From the Publisher