How Organisations Misrecognize Skilled Migrants’ Worth and Contribute to Precarity

Why are skilled migrants at risk of precarity, despite their competence being in demand? We investigate this at the level of organisations and how they evaluate skilled migrants’ labour worth. Drawing on a 36-month qualitative investigation, our study explores how a HR initiative for recruiting skilled immigrants assesses their competences. With Lamont’s sociology of evaluation, we approach recruitment as a social process of recognition of migrants’ professional worth and identify four instances of recognition gaps: the worth of immigrants’ labour, the worth of their academic skills, their expected social position, and the value attached to the cultural diversity they bring. This low social valuation can be linked to precarious positions. Our contribution to research on skilled migrants’ precarity illuminates how organisational process play a role in their market worth devaluation. Contribution to HR inclusive recruitment literature stresses how the evaluative design of the process, rather than individual bias, reproduces discrimination.