Perceived Employability of Highly Skilled Migrant Women in STEM: Insights from Labor Market Intermediaries’ Professionals

Aurora Ricci, Francesca Crivellaro and Daniela Bolzani
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Aurora Ricci: Department of Education Studies “Giovanni Maria Bertin”, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy
Francesca Crivellaro: Department of Education Studies “Giovanni Maria Bertin”, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy
Daniela Bolzani: Department of Management, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy

Administrative Sciences, 2021, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: While global economies are in a tremendous need for talented workers that could fill vacancies in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, available evidence shows that highly skilled migrants with a background in these fields are not protected from brain waste and deskilling. In this paper, we add to the previous literature on the employability of highly skilled migrant women from the specific—and under-investigated—perspective of labor market intermediaries. We specifically investigate what the barriers and resources are for employability of highly skilled migrant women in STEM, as perceived by labor market intermediaries’ professionals; and what the training needs are that labor market intermediaries’ professionals perceive to effectively work with this target group. We use unique explorative survey data collected in 2018 in five countries (Greece, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom) from professionals working in diverse labor market intermediary organizations. We find that these professionals perceive the employability of migrant women in STEM as rather low, and strongly determined by migrant women’s psychological capital. Professionals in Southern Europe perceive structural barriers as more important than those in other countries. Professionals display training needs related to ad-hoc mentoring and networking competences for this specific target group. We discuss theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords: highly skilled migration; highly skilled migrants; international migrants; labor market intermediaries; women; gender and Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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