Underemploying Highly Skilled Migrants: An Organizational Logic Protecting Corporate 'Normality'

Why do highly skilled migrants encounter difficulties getting a skilled job? In this study, instead of searching for an answer in migrants’ characteristics, we turn to organizations and ask: why do organizations underemploy migrants? With an in-depth qualitative study of a program for highly-skilled migrants’ labour integration in Sweden, we show that highly skilled migrants are perceived as a potential threat to organizational norms and habits. Using the relational theory of risk – approaching risk as socially constructed – the study provides a novel explanation for highly-skilled migrants’ underemployment. It shows an organization logic protecting corporate practices seen as ‘normal’ from a perceived disruption that employing highly-skilled migrants could possibly cause. Theoretical contributions to the understanding of highly-skilled migrants’ employability are threefold: (1) the field assumption that organizations are favorable to hiring migrants is challenged, (2) highly-skilled migrants’ underemployment is explained through a protective organizational logic, and (3) we stress the necessity to problematize an implicit reference to organizational normality when recruiting.