Highly skilled and highly mobile? Examining gendered and ethnicised labour market conditions for migrant women in STEM-professions in Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACTFor the past decades, most Western countries have curtailed low-skilled immigration and adopted policies encouraging highly skilled migration. Accordingly, the German government began in 2000 to initiate changes in policy and legislation to encourage skilled professionals particularly in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)-professions to take up employment in Germany. Although highly skilled migrants are privileged with regard to education, competencies, and abilities, the article argues that highly skilled migrant women’s transition into the labour market and their work performance are determined by the gendered and ethnicised conditions still prevalent in STEM fields. The paper thereby draws on qualitative interviews with highly skilled migrant women who migrated to the second largest city in Germany: Hamburg. The findings show that migrant women face a traditionally highly gender-segregated sector. Furthermore, they are confronted with ethnicised ascriptions that contribute to ‘othering’ processes, which impact their professional identity and slow down the transferral of their cultural capital. Yet, the majority of the interviewed women developed a strong local attachment and sense of belonging that fostered their social integration and counteracted experienced discrimination in the workplace. As a result they were less willing to uproot themselves again and thus contrast the popular image of being ‘birds of passage’.