Highly skilled dependent migrants entering the labour market: Gender and place in skill transfer

Regional development - including in the Arctic - relies heavily on in-migration, skills acquisition and international expertise. This paper is based on a qualitative study (Part of the fieldwork was undertaken with Dr. T. Fossland, University of Tromsø.) of highly skilled immigrants in Tromsø, Norway, undertaken while migrants attended the Global Future talent mobilisation programme. It builds on migrant narratives and observations, showing both women and men migrate for non-work reasons - often marriage or love. While previous studies focused on women as dependent migrants and described the 'de-skilling' of highly skilled migrants during migration, this study addresses the mechanisms which make entering labour markets a problem, prior to the deskilling, for men and women. Acknowledging that love migration is grounded in processes outside the labour market, and that migrants enter a specific local labour market, I employ a contextual perspective focused on gender and place. Theories on the transfer of skills are added to understand the processes of accessing and exclusion from skilled labour markets. The study finds gendered expectations and norms affect both women and men's participation in labour markets. It shows how both the scale and structure of a local labour market are important in understanding exclusion processes and that going beyond language proficiency, localised knowledge and access to local non-migrant networks seem necessary to make skills relevant. These findings strengthen our understanding of migrants' exclusion, and the spatial, social and cultural embeddedness of skills.

► Adds new insights to the growing literature on gender and skilled migrants. ► Shows gendered aspects in entering labour markets for male and female love migrants. ► Moves beyond the language proficiency to argue the contextuality of skill transfer. ► Adds to theories of skill transfer in understanding skilled migration. ► Offer insight in place specificities in accessing labour markets for skilled migrants.