Essentialism and intersectionality in the selection and recruitment of staff: the devaluation of migrant women’s skills in France and Italy

ABSTRACTWhile skilled migration has become one of the most acceptable ways of entering Western European countries, the skills of migrant women with tertiary education continue to be undervalued in labour markets. To understand why these women are confined to the bottom of the employment structure, we argue that it is necessary to analyse how essentialism, based on the intersection of gender and racialization, influenced by colonial imaginaries and global inequalities, shapes recruiters’ representations. The article is based on multi-sited fieldwork which consisted of 52 in-depth interviews conducted in France and Italy with migrant women, recruiters, and social workers. Our analysis emphasizes that intersectional essentialism influence recruiters’ assessments of education, work experience, soft skills, and language skills while it reinforces the eroticization of migrant women’s bodies, ultimately leading to the devaluation of migrant women’s capacities.KEYWORDS: Colonialismessentialismintersectionalitymigrant womenrecruitmentskills AcknowledgementsWe are grateful to the participants for accepting to contribute to our research. Thank you for sharing your experience, feelings, and thoughts. We also thank all the scholars and friends that contributed to our work through discussions, feedbacks, and proof-reading. This work would not have been possible without the financial support of the University of Milan-Bicocca and the University of Padua.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. According to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (available at https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2019/world-ranking), the Ca’ Foscari University in Veneto has a lower score than seven African universities, while the University of Haute Alsace ranks significantly lower.2. Bodywork includes service sector employees who work with their bodies and the bodies of others (McDowell Citation2011).3. In 2020, over 30% of women in Europe were employed in education, human health or social work activities compared to 8% of men. See: https://eige.europa.eu/gender-equality-index/2020/domain/work4. Cadre includes both workers who use in-depth knowledge to perform their job and managers with supervisory functions (Hamiot & Merle Citation2017).