Built-in normativity in tailoring identity: the case of the EU skills profile tool for integrating refugees

Merve Burnazoglu

Journal of Economic Methodology, 2020, vol. 27, issue 2, 117-129

Abstract: In current European policy debates, identifying refugee skills is considered to be a significant precondition for matching refugees and jobs and thus for labor market integration. Refugees have diverse skills, and therefore, measures in policy making regarding the integration of refugees need to be flexible and tailor-made. This paper presents an analytical framework to investigate a tension between one-size-fits-all and tailor-made measures that was raised in a meeting of the European Economic and Social Committee in 2017. I investigate whether the EU Skills Profile Tool, which is said to be a powerful tool for making it easier to identify refugees’ skills, would be of a tailor-made type model. Employing diverse accounts of economic models as epistemic mediators, I argue that a built-in normativity of the tool mediates between refugees and their representation, which limits the tailoring of the Tool and leads, nevertheless, to tailoring of refugees, which may also have normative implications in use.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1350178X.2019.1680856 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jecmet:v:27:y:2020:i:2:p:117-129

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJEC20

DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2019.1680856

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Methodology is currently edited by John Davis and D Wade Hands

More articles in Journal of Economic Methodology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().