Wasting Newcomers’ Human Capital? Cultural Capital and the Integration of Skilled Migrants into the British and German Labor Markets

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the degree to which Britain and Germany are affected by a troubling social and political paradox: On the one hand, demographic developments have driven them toward policies aimed at attracting highly skilled migrants in an increasingly competitive international labor market. On the other hand, they have largely failed to take full advantage of the educational and professional experiences that migrants bring to their countries. Newcomers often face various forms of exclusion from the labor market and end up working in jobs for which they are overqualified. The result is a ‘brain waste’ that is counterproductive to the socio-economic goals of immigration and detrimental to the goal of successfully integrating newcomers into the fabric of society. I argue that the devaluation of immigrants’ skills and experiences is driven in part by how members of the host society measure and value their ‘cultural capital’; thus, even in contexts where cultural predispositions have seemingly given way to more economically instrumental forms of immigration management, cultural assumptions play an important and hitherto underappreciated role in shaping integration trajectories.