Education and mobility for highly skilled educated migrants in Denmark

CIP is hosting the presentation of a PhD project by Ashika Niraula, DPU:

Exploring the relationship between education and mobility in a world of qualifications: A study of highly educated migrants in Denmark
The presentation will be conducted in English.

Abstract
In the context of rapid internationalization of the Danish labour market, this PhD project explores the possible challenges and potentials that highly educated migrants face in the course of their mobility to the Danish labour market and the Danish society.

Based on a six months ethnographic fieldwork in greater Copenhagen that was conducted in spring 2016, this project develops a new understanding of the intersections of geographical, educational, legal, and social mobilities of the highly educated migrants currently living in Denmark.

This project draws on the biographic narrative interviews with 35 highly educated migrants from 17 different nationalities with educational background in computer science, health, engineering, business, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. Some of them were working in the sectors related to their qualifications while some were temporarily engaged in non-related precarious jobs during the time of the interviews. Such a cross-national, cross-gender, cross-educational and cross-professional approach raises questions about prevailing categorizations of immigrants (i.e. highly skilled and low skilled), the notion of ‘skills’ as well as ideas of ‘deskilling’ and ‘reskilling’, and about their experiences of inclusion and exclusion in the Danish labour market and the Danish society.

About the author
Ashika Niraula is a PhD Fellow at the Department of Educational Anthropology at Danmarks Institut for Pædagogik og Uddannelse (DPU), Aarhus Universitet.