International Organization for Migration (IOM)

is required for indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom. It is also notable
in this regard, as highlighted in Chapter 1, that there are requirements for English
language ability for skilled migrants entering the United Kingdom.
A third key issue highlighted by Green (2007) in matching migrants’ skills and
employers’ needs is migrants’ understanding of how the United Kingdom labour
market operates. Here, migrant community and support organizations have a key
role to play (as discussed below).
3.2. Promoting cultural diversity, addressing discrimination
and the transparency and accessibility of available job
opportunities
Reflecting the importance of labour migration from eastern and central Europe in
recent years, much of the literature on identification of migrants with appropriate skills
has focused on this group of migrants rather than on third-country nationals. Eastern
and central European migrants are frequently portrayed by employers in positive terms
(Ruhs and Anderson, 2010), especially in contrast to United Kingdom labour and
some third-country nationals on a scale of relative attractiveness (Green et al., 2007),
especially for low-skill jobs. Findlay et al. (2012) suggest that imperfect information
about the qualities of individual candidates and normative understandings of the traits
associated with the ‘good worker’ mean that the appropriateness of potential workers
for particular types of jobs may be determined in relation to preconceptions about
categories such as age or sex, as opposed to the individual merits of a candidate. Such
stereotyping is of particular significance when the employer and the potential employee
are physically separated by geographical distance (as is the case in international labour
migration) but also when labour market intermediaries (such as recruitment agencies)
are engaged in the recruitment and selection process.
‘Constructions of nationality’ (and also racial/ethnic markers) can have an impact on
the functions assigned to migrant workers, with workers from EU countries more
preferred for ‘front of house’ roles than migrants from regions such as the Middle
East, Asia or Africa (Matthews and Ruhs, 2007). Wills et al. (2010) have shown that
national origins may be used as a proxy for differentiating between migrant workers,
so producing a migrant division of labour. Moreover, in a test for racial discrimination
in recruitment practices in British cities (Wood et al., 2009) involving the submission
of matched job applications from white and ethnic minority applicants to each of 987
vacancies advertised between October 2008 and May 2009, in which ethnic identity
was conveyed in the applications using names found to be widely associated with
the ethnic groups included in the study, revealed that net discrimination in favour
of white names over equivalent applications from ethnic minority candidates was 29
per cent (this level is both high and statistically significantly different from zero).
This is indicative of stereotyping and discrimination.
In some instances preferences for migrant workers from some origin countries as
opposed to others reflect similarities in terms of organization and practice between
country studIes – UNITED KINGDOM
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