Validation of immigrants’ prior foreign learning as a framing practice

This paper explores the attempts by public officials and caseworkers to manage an overflow of immigrants in the labour market in Sweden. I draw on notions of framing and overflowing, inspired by Michel Callon's (1998) work on the organizing of market-based exchange relationships. I argue that v...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European management journal 2017-12, Vol.35 (6), p.729-736
Main Author: Diedrich, Andreas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business Administration
Ethnography
Frame analysis
Företagsekonomi
Immigrants
Labor market
Learning
Noncitizens
Organizing
Overflow
Public officials
Studies
Validation
Validity
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Summary:This paper explores the attempts by public officials and caseworkers to manage an overflow of immigrants in the labour market in Sweden. I draw on notions of framing and overflowing, inspired by Michel Callon's (1998) work on the organizing of market-based exchange relationships. I argue that validation is best understood as a framing practice, aimed at creating an understanding for the vastness of foreign experience – including skills and competence – of recent immigrants to Sweden, to make this experience measurable and manageable. Validation as a framing practice thereby exemplifies the widespread trust in framing as a way to normalise overflows – to turn overflows into normal flows. However, as the ethnography-inspired study reported here shows, repeated framing does not remove overflows; instead, it produces new and different types of overflows. In the conclusions, I emphasise the heavy investments required by validation in contrast with the fragility of the results it produces in the context of migration management.
ISSN:0263-2373
1873-5681
DOI:10.1016/j.emj.2017.05.008