Downward Professional Mobility among Poles Working and Living in Norway

Abstract

This article explores the diverse trajectories of downward professional mobility as experienced by skilled Polish migrants living in Norway. On the basis of 30 in-depth qualitative interviews with Poles who have worked below their level of competence after migrating to Norway, I outline (1) how they tend to channel themselves into low-skilled employment at the initial stages of migration as they commonly assume it is inevitable when migrating, and (2) how they interpret and respond to remaining in low-skilled jobs after settling in Norway, often explaining it as a result of racialising and discriminatory practices against them. By bridging concepts of habitus and field with hierarchies of desirability of national migrant groups, I propose a notion of a ‘transnational field of national hierarchies’. I argue that the downward professional mobility is both an individual and collective social practice guided by what I call ‘the national component of the habitus’ and embedded in the transnational field, where different national identities are hierarchically positioned.