European Educational Migrants on the Labour Markets. Europeanised Professionals or Workers of the DDD Sector?

The presentation will investigate the question whether the higher education received in the host country facilitates immigrants’ access to the primary segment of the job market. According to a prevailing conviction and empirical research, immigrants are most likely to be employed in the secondary segment of the labour market, where they perform works which are described as “DDD”: dirty, dull and demeaning. However, this finding may be inaccurate in case of educational migrants, who also work while they study and after graduation.  The aim of this presentation is to analyse the situation on the foreign labour market and career paths of mobile Europeans who migrated to take up education abroad. This question is especially intriguing in the light of the European Union attempts to standardize the educational curricula and university degrees in European countries.  I will explore the problem basing on qualitative and quantitative inquiry: interviews with Polish students abroad and data from POLPAN (Polish Panel Survey 1988-2013) questionnaires describing the situation of educational migrants from Poland to various countries. The findings will provide an answer to the question whether migrants who receive higher education abroad are able to overcome the pitfalls and limits, imposed on foreigners on the labour markets of the receiving countries.