Coping with essentialism and stratifications: Migrant women with tertiary education in local labour markets of France and Italy

Migrant women with tertiary education are significantly concerned with over-education, de-skilling and underemployment, as they primarily work in jobs that are not in line with their studies. The dissertation argues that analysing essentialism is crucial to understanding the stratifications of the labour market and comprehending why migrant women continue to be confined in jobs with low social recognition, despite their degrees. The thesis puts into light that representations based on coloniality, global inequalities and also on conservative and eroticised models of femininity, affect the selection process and finally limit the access that these women have to employment. To explore the influence of essentialism in the assessment of skills, the thesis uses the concept of embodiness. It stresses that recruiters tend to value skills, according to who embodies them, and depending on how candidates are perceived in terms of class, gender, and racialisation. Assessment of skills appears to involve a high level of scrutiny over female candidates' body and habitus, leading to class selectivity and eroticisation of migrant women. Moreover, the dissertation explores how migrant women with tertiary education are coping, resisting, and eventually challenging essentialism and stratifications. It analyses how they react to their position in the local labour markets, whether they feel downgraded or they have accessed satisfying jobs. In addition, motherhood emerged from fieldwork as a crucial factor that influences migrant women's trajectories. As a result, the dissertation analyses how the interplay of migration, welfare, care, and gender orders conditions access to employment, leading to frequent de-skilling The local labour markets that were selected in which to conduct fieldwork are those of Veneto, in Italy and Alsace, in France. These two contexts are characterised by different models of care, and of addressing migrants' otherness. The social phenomenon is studied from a variety of perspectives. The dissertation crosses the gazes of migrant women with tertiary education, born in Sub-Saharan African and European non-EU countries, with those of recruiters and social workers. Overall, 52 narrative interviews were conducted and analysed using thematic analysis and biographical policy evaluation. In addition, the dissertation is one of the first studies that uses statistical data to highlight the differential access that migrants with tertiary education have to employment in Italy and France, according to their country of birth and gender. By studying the challenges faced by migrant women with tertiary education, the dissertation highlights how access to resources and employment is gendered, classed, and racialised and how essentialist processes influence it. It argues that understanding the mechanisms that contribute to reproducing stratifications enables us to design paths towards more equal access to employment and resources.