Abstract
The conditions for intra-European labour mobility have changed significantly during recent decades, mainly due to the European Single Market. Despite this, internationally mobile and highly skilled intra-EU migrants from West to West have not received enough attention in the sociology of work. The present article focuses on highly skilled labour migrants with a university degree from Sweden, currently working in Germany or the UK. Swedish migrants feel they challenge specific norms related to hierarchies in the workplace, behaving according to their own ‘taken-for-granted’ norms concerning the ways in which work is organized and tasks are assigned. Their privileged position as educated Swedish migrants is an important part of their self-image and enables them to challenge norms. Furthermore, they also deal with self-perceived otherness while making sense of their experiences of contradictions and norm-breaking. The findings highlight their self-definitions, according to which they are simultaneously (by default) insiders and/or (superior) outsiders.
Highlights
With a focus on the mobility of highly skilled Swedish labour migrants,1 the present article examines implicit assumptions connected to norm-breaking behaviour in the workplace and explores the strategies used to deal with potential norm-breaking behaviour
Since the establishment of the European Single Market and the four freedoms connected to it, intra-European labour market mobility has increased (Eurydice, 2012)
Besides the European legislation allowing and facilitating mobility, existent norms and values of Western European dominance are believed to affect the situation for European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) migrants and to be of importance for individuals’ transnational mobility; white middle-class Western Europeans, compared to non-white, are more likely to feel at home and be recognized worldwide (Faist et al, 2013)
Summary
With a focus on the mobility of highly skilled Swedish labour migrants,1 the present article examines implicit assumptions connected to norm-breaking behaviour in the workplace and explores the strategies used to deal with potential norm-breaking behaviour. Highly skilled migrants, impression management, otherness, privilege, transnational labour market, workplace norms
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