Abstract
How does the misrecognition of their skills explain the under-employment of educated migrants in Europe? Our study addresses this question at the level of recruitment. Current research points to the potential limitations of recruitment processes, in particular in the screening of candidates with foreign sounding names, and in the international experience of the hiring team. In contrast to this recruiters' center approach, we opt for a process view. We approach recruitment as a social process of recognition that balances acts of identification and rationalisation of the boundaries established between those seen as worthy of employment, and those who are not. We take the case of an initiative specially designed for the recruitment of skilled migrants in a large Swedish organisation. By focusing on six steps in the recruitment process of skilled migrants -analysis of needs, position advertising, pre-selection, internal screening, speed interviewing, recruitment decision-making- we show how the perceived worth of skilled migrants is weak in early stages of the process, and how sometimes migrants’ ethnic capital, rather than their academic education is valued. We elucidate how each step of the recruitment process is about establishing a boundary and rationalizing it, in view of the perceived worth of candidates, itself judged in relation to other groups in society. This study stresses that the earliest phases of the recruitment process, thus before screening, are decisive in the establishment of the recognition of migrants’ skills and merit more attention in our theorizing of inclusive recruitment. Theoretically, the paper suggests the underemployment of skilled migrants is linked to their devaluation in routine recruitment practices that reflect an order of worth between social groups in society, rather than individual biases of evaluators and HR managers.