“I don't attribute that to the fact that I'm a foreigner”: Female CEE migrants in Austria and their perspectives on deskilling experiences

While workers may generally experience a non-correspondence between their
qualifications and job requirements, the phenomenon of deskilling is particularly widespread
among migrants. Gender, as one of the key forms of differentiation within societies, is also
highly relevant to migration-related deskilling. This paper applies a qualitative approach and
focuses on female migrants from CEE countries with a tertiary degree living in Austria to
reveal the interaction of gender and migration-related categorisations regarding deskilling
from an individual perspective. Structured around the case study of one woman, which
characterises key findings for our sample, we demonstrate how the relevance of the respective
categories is not fixed or stable, but instead depends both on time and context.