 Otherness in the Workplace among Highly Skilled Labour Migrants: Swedes in Germany and the UKYlva Wallinder Work, Employment & Society, 2022, vol. 36, issue 2, 253-270 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. Keywords: habitus; highly skilled migrants; impression management; otherness; privilege; transnational labour market; workplace norms (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:36:y:2022:i:2:p:253-270 DOI: 10.1177/09500170211024444 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association |
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