Professional Inequality in Exile: Digital Precarity Among Skilled Syrian Refugees in Germany

Shaden Sabouni
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Shaden Sabouni: Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Germany

Social Inclusion, 2026, vol. 14

Abstract: Highly skilled refugees are often assumed to possess forms of social and human capital that facilitate labour market integration in host societies. However, forced displacement disrupts not only professional trajectories but also the institutional and social infrastructures through which skills, qualifications, and professional identities are recognised and converted into employment. This article develops the concept of connectivity without convertibility to explain how digitally mediated social ties among highly skilled Syrian refugees in Germany remain socially active and emotionally meaningful while failing to generate institutional recognition or stable professional mobility. Drawing on 24 qualitative interviews, participant observation, and digital ethnography conducted between 2022 and 2024, the study examines how Syrian professionals use Facebook and WhatsApp groups to reconstruct professional networks, access information, and maintain occupational identity after displacement. The findings show that digital platforms provide emotional support, visibility, and symbolic forms of professional continuity, yet these forms of connectivity remain institutionally non‐convertible. Rather than facilitating labour market integration, digital networking often reproduces prolonged waiting, downward mobility, and professional precarity. The article argues that connectivity without convertibility represents a broader structural condition of forced migration in which refugees remain digitally connected but excluded from the institutional mechanisms required for professional recognition and career restoration. Digital platforms therefore function less as pathways to integration than as fragile infrastructures of survival that sustain hope, identity, and social participation under conditions of structural exclusion.

Keywords: digital migration; Germany; highly skilled refugees; professional precarity; social capital; Syrian refugees (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:socinc:v14:y:2026:a:12013

DOI: 10.17645/si.12013

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