‘One improves here every day’: the occupational and learning journeys of ‘lower-skilled’ European migrants in the London region

Laura Moroşanu (Corresponding Author), Russell King, Aija Lulle, Manolis Pratsinakis

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper examines narratives of learning and occupational advancement amongst migrants employed in ‘low-skilled’ jobs, based on in-depth interviews with secondary-educated East and South Europeans living in the London region. Our findings indicate that many achieved varying degrees of professional gratification, progress, and skills development within occupational sectors typically associated with unattractive conditions, limited benefits or opportunities to get ahead. Participants’ narratives of achievement expand the relatively limited literature that challenges common perceptions of occupational mobility and professional development as the terrain of the ‘highly skilled’. Furthermore, we examine how migrants made sense of their career opportunities and success. We discuss two discourses, centred on ‘hard work’ and ‘creativity’ respectively, through which participants challenged and reconfigured traditional ‘high’-‘low-skilled’ divides. Our findings contribute to critiques of traditional understandings of migrant human capital and simplistic ‘high’-‘low-skilled’ distinctions in two ways: by documenting the less visible experiences of learning and career progress amongst secondary-educated European youth who enter ‘low-skilled’ employment abroad, and by calling attention to subjective understandings of occupational mobility and the new ‘symbolic boundaries’ around skills, broadly construed, that migrants redrew in their reflections on career progress.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1775-1792
Number of pages18
JournalJournal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Volume47
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords*

  • EU migrants in London
  • occupational mobility
  • ‘low-skilled’ migrants

Field of Science*

  • 5.4 Sociology
  • 6.4 Arts (arts, history of arts, performing arts, music)
  • 5.7 Social and Economic geography

Publication Type*

  • 1.1. Scientific article indexed in Web of Science and/or Scopus database

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