ILPC 2027

This paper explores the processes of skills development using a matched sample of qualitative interviews with skilled and highly skilled migrant and indigenous (UK) workers. Theoretically, we extend a critical realist approach to understanding and exploring skills and skills formation. According to this approach, skills and abilities develop as a consequence of practical engagement with the setting [1]. When viewed in this way, skills are a personal capacity (agency) that is actualised (as in 'comes into being') via interactions within the field or setting. Our “deep” or potential skills (unrealised abilities) become realised as a consequence practical engagement, which we take to be the reflexive process of learning from others and/or, practice development, which we take to be creating new ways of doing things, either independently or via relations with others. In this paper we use the concept of practical engagement and practice development to distinguish between skilled and highly skilled workers. It is widely acknowledged that skilled people are practically engaged with complex things, which they accomplish autonomously, with these capacities typically attracting value via an employment relation [2]. We argue that, as a consequence of on-going perceptions of valuable and novel contributions to practice development, highly skilled people command a superior bargaining position in negotiations over pay and other working conditions. This is because practice development enables workers to hold key positions in processes of organisational development, more generally [3]. Whilst, arguably, we are obliged to practically engaged with our work related tasks, opportunities for practice development are shaped by workplace settings. For example, some workplaces may not recognise the skills of migrant or indigenes due to political or other processes. Other workplaces may not provide the time and space for practice development can occur. The question is who, then, gets access to opportunities for practice development and why? Opportunities to increase skills, from skilled to more highly skilled, may be few and far between. Embodying the right cultural norms [4] and having the right social connections (within and beyond the workplace)[5] may be important determinant of who gets to develop practice. As migrants are known to have different (and less valuable) types of social connection and to have less local cultural knowledge than the indigenous population, we might expect migrants to have less opportunity for practice development. We might also expect that migrants who are more highly skilled will also do less well than their indigenous equivalents, for similar reason. This analysis will use our matched sample of skilled and highly skilled indigenes and migrants to test these theoretically informed assumptions. The analysis, which clusters respondents into four groups for comparative purposes (skilled indigenes, skilled migrants, highly skilled indigenes, highly skilled migrants) will be divided in to two sections. The first compares experiences of skilled migrants with skilled indigenes. These data suggest skilled migrants are in competition with skilled indigenes, with migrants being at a distinct disadvantage when developing and using social capital to access opportunities for practice development. This group were also less enculturated to the norms of the workplace setting, especially in firms that were local or regional rather than multinational. As a consequence, they found it difficult to navigate towards projects in which novel opportunities for practice development occurred. The same was not the case for highly skilled migrants. This group did not view themselves as in competition with indigenes. They were typically hired as "experts", with rare and difficult to imitate abilities that were highly sought after, as a consequence they were exceptions to local "rules" and had more opportunity to engage with practice development in a way that was perceived as of value. As consequence, many highly skilled migrants were able to maintain and even enhanced their reputations. The paper will discuss the consequences of these findings. For example, the cultural dimensions which enable skills to be developed, enacted, recognised and valued in particular settings are rarely considered, and so attention will be paid to the way in which culture differentially affects outcomes for migrants with different skill levels. Social capital also appears to be relevant in different ways for highly skilled migrants, when compared to their less skilled counterparts. The methodological contribution (a comparative method using qualitative clusters as the basis for analysis), will be discussed, as will the critical realist approach to theorising and analysing skills more generally. [1] Archer, M. (2000) Being Human: The Problem of Agency, Cambridge University Press. [2] Whilst other commoditised relations, such as firm ownership, and charitable work, can also be seen as “skilled”, these forms of work have alternative political and moral dimensions which merit separate analyses [3] Smith, C. (2010) 'Go With the Flow: Labour Power Mobility and Labour Process Theory', in Thompson, P. and Smith, C. (eds.) Working Life: Renewing Labour Process Analysis, London: Palgrave MacMillan: 269-296. [4] Grugulis, I. and Stoyanova, D. (2012) Social capital and networks in film and TV: jobs for the boys? Organization Studies, 33(10): 1311-1331 [5] Coleman, JS. (1988) Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94(Sup.):s95-s120