'Low-wage’ not ‘low-skill’: moving away from the skills binary in labour migration discourse

This blog is part of SLSA blog series ‘Exploring people’s experiences of ‘law’ through the lens of migration’ (Edited by Dr Simran Kalra and Dr Fanni Gyurko), which takes a socio-legal approach to migration related issues in a variety of contexts and jurisdictions. In this blog series we shift the focus from the nation-state understanding of migration to the ‘migrant’s perspective’. This blog-series is an opportunity to explore new, migration-related research agendas and perspectives. 

Arwen Joyce, University of Leicester, Leicester Law School 

Keywords: labour migration, low-skill, low-wage

by Redilion on DeviantArt

‘Low-skilled’ is a common adjective used to describe migrant workers and the work they do. We find it and similar terms in the academic literature, reports published by international institutions, and government policy guidance (see, for example, ILO 2019, The Migration Observatory 2024, Singapore Ministry of Manpower 2024). This term may refer to migrants without formal or recognised qualifications, to jobs that do not require such qualifications, or to migrants working in low-wage occupations regardless of their qualifications or the difficulty level of the job. 

The accepted narrative is that countries seeking to solidify their post-industrial services and knowledge-based economies want more ‘skilled’ workers. They contribute positively in economic terms, are less likely to be a burden on the welfare state (Chiswick 2011), and are more likely to be accepted by an immigration-wary public (e.g. Naumann et al. 2018). 

Classifying some workers as ‘skilled’ has become an unchallenged cornerstone concept in the ideology of labour migration. Empirical analyses (e.g. Ruhs 2013, Dauvergne and Marsden 2014) of labour migration policies are strong-armed into using these categories because the data governments collect and publish are categorised this way. 

Feigned neutrality

Joppke described skill-based migrant selection policies as non-discriminatory because ‘the state may consider the individual only for what she does, not for who she is… [and] the individual is selected … according to her agency rather than according to what she is immutably born with.’ (Joppke 2005, 2-3) We are meant to accept that skills-based migrant selection policies are neutral and non-discriminatory and are therefore preferable, both in economic terms and on fairness grounds, to migrant selection policies based on ethnicity, colonial ties or family relationships. 

But critical scholars urge us to resist this claim to neutrality: skill categories and the hierarchies they create are socially constructed, arbitrarily applied and constantly shifting (Liu-Farrer 2024). They emerge from deeply rooted colonial, racial, cultural and gendered hierarchies (Alloul 2020), and these labels have legal and social implications: they reinforce stereotypes and are used to justify marginalisation (Borrelli and Ruedin, 2024, 2). 

‘Low-skilled’ is in the eye of the beholder

I bristle when I encounter skills terminology describing either jobs or people because these terms are ambiguous, inaccurate and inherently political. They mask a host of neoliberal capitalist assumptions about the skills different jobs require, the relative value of different types of work, and the people who fill them. 

Egan concludes, it is ‘difficult to conclusively define what counts as ‘high-skilled’, ‘low-skilled’, ‘unskilled’, or even ‘semi-skilled’, but he defines ‘unskilled’ workers as ‘people without any trade specialization, higher education or personal wealth’ (Egan 2020, 110). The inclusion of ‘personal wealth’ there is telling – in a global capitalist system, those with great wealth are either presumed to be highly skilled or don’t need skills at all!

Labelling some workers and jobs as ‘low-skilled’ is problematic because ‘credentials held by migrants from different racial and national backgrounds are not equally valued’ (Liu-Farrer 2024). The skills categories into which migrants are placed do ‘not correspond to…actual ability and skill…[but are instead] determined by [their] economic and legal positions (Liu-Farrer 2024). 

In addition, skills-based classifications should be rejected because of what they imply about us as workers and as individuals. Defining someone solely by their ‘skills’ is dehumanizing. We are more than ‘decontextualized and bureaucratized human capital’ (Liu-Farrer 2024). 

Who benefits? Who doesn’t?

The unquestioning adoption of the term ‘low-skilled’ depoliticises, normalises and conceals the undesirable power dynamics that underpin labour migration regimes (Dauvergne and Marsden 2013, 527). 

These dynamics have calcified a two-tiered labour market in most developed economies. Employees enjoy stable careers and prospects for advancement, while workers, and especially migrant workers, are boxed into sectors characterised by precarity, stagnant wages and poor working conditions (European Industrial Relations Dictionary). They also reinforce hierarchies between rich and poor countries and are a useful tool for those with an anti-immigration political agenda seeking to justify migrants’ marginalisation and exclusion (McGovern, 2020).  

Contrary to what some might argue, the differential treatment of workers in different sectors cannot be solely attributed to variations in productivity (European Industrial Relations Dictionary). As just one example, low-wage workers recruited from Eastern Europe through the UK’s Worker Registration Scheme were found to work four hours per week more than the national average and have low rates of benefits reliance (Dauvergne and Marsden 2013, 536). 

In other words, the less favourable conditions and treatment low-wage workers endure are not related to low productivity, they are rooted in globalisation and neoliberal deregulation. They reflect the discrimination and marginalisation produced by viewing some jobs and workers as more valuable than others.

Loaded with neoliberal ideology, conceptions of skill are also gendered and racialised. The low wages associated with care work and manual labour do not reflect the skills possessed by the workers who fill these jobs, or the skills required to undertake them, but that these jobs are undervalued by capitalist economies. Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to some low-wage jobs being lauded as ‘essential’, but this has generally not resulted in higher wages or better working conditions for the people who perform them (Fernández-Reino et al, 2020).

Assumptions tied to the high-skill/low-skill binary find their way into policymaking but also into the academic literature. For example, Castles and Ozkul note that in the late 2010s, Germany saw ‘an increase in migrant employment concentrated in sectors mainly providing jobs for women, such as aged care, domestic service and cleaning’ (Castles and Ozkul 2014, 33). They are observing how a destination economy categorised and filled these jobs, not making a value judgment about who should be filling them. Nonetheless, it is worth pausing to consider why these gendered labour market patterns exist and how we can avoid unwittingly accepting and reinforcing them.

What’s in a name?

We must re-think commonly used terms, especially ones that ‘correspond to an administrative logic’ that is rooted in a history of colonialism and discrimination (Borrelli and Ruedin, 2024, 2). Dauvergne and Marsden warned us over a decade ago that assumptions embedded in migration binaries reinforce problematic power imbalances and constrain policymaking (Dauvergne and Marsden 2013, 526). The binary they were focused on is the ‘numbers versus rights’ trade-off identified by Ruhs and Martin (2008), but the high-skill, low-skill binary functions in the same way.

Skill categories are perfect examples of commonly used terms in the migration discourse that are accepted without interrogation and are used to justify the marginalisation of some workers. Instead of accepting the policy straitjacket the high-skill/low-skill binary creates, these terms should be rejected.

As migration scholars, it is important to be deliberate and considered in the terminology we use and there is great value in disrupting accepted binaries to reshape migration policy narratives. I use the term ‘low-wage’ instead of ‘low-skill’ to describe migrant workers and the jobs they perform. The term ‘low wage’ centres something that is more obviously set by markets and is less connected to the supposed attributes of the worker, which are too easily under-valued.

This may seem like a minor deviation from an entrenched and dominant lexicon, but the terms we use and the narratives they construct are meaningful and powerful. Let’s banish skills terminology and its feigned neutrality from the labour migration discourse.