In their own time: Refugee healthcare professionals’ attempts at temporal re-appropriation

Abstract

Scholarship on refugee labour market participation regularly alludes to the temporal dimension of the process, yet explicit engagement with it remains limited. I argue that researching the temporalities of refugee employment re-entry is valuable as it discerns the recursive interrelation between social structure and individual agency that advances or curbs the labour market trajectories of refugees. Namely, refugees’ perceptions of time inform their integration pathways. In this article, I interrogate how highly educated refugees perceive the temporalities imposed upon them by the integration framework, their efforts of temporal re-appropriation and the ways in which institutional factors inform these re-appropriation efforts and, thus, individuals’ sense of integration. To this end, I discuss and compare 11 refugee healthcare professionals’ perceptions of licensure procedures in Oslo and Malmö based on material from semi-structured interviews. The refugee professionals reported that the licensure appropriated their time through, for instance, prolonged suspension from work and abundance of pointless waiting time. Seeing time as a precious commodity, they deemed the imposed temporalities as problematic, employing different attempts of temporal agency to speed up the licensure process. When comparing the attempts of temporal re-appropriation between the licensure procedures in Oslo and Malmö, I find that the perceived clarity of the licensure requirements and process, accessibility of support structures and existence of tailored qualification programmes lend licensure a quality of institutional plasticity. This fosters individuals’ attempts to accelerate their licensure endeavours, thereby promoting their re-entry into the labour market. However, rather than disrupting the underlying power relations determining the relative value of foreign healthcare qualifications, temporal re-appropriation maintained the established institutional rationale.

Unpacking “the system”: Multi‐level governance gaps in the labour market integration of highly skilled refugees

“…Few initiatives specifically target highly skilled asylum seekers, as it is uncertain whether they will be granted the right to stay. These persons can benefit from labour market preparation initiatives while they are waiting for a decision on their asylum claim, enabling them to turn “professional dead‐time” (Mozetič, 2022b: 425) into “productive” time.…”

“…Employment officers and job coaches can be crucial actors in helping refugees navigate "the system", as Mozetič (2022b) shows in a study of refugee healthcare professionals in Malmö. While informants in Mozetič's study reported that PES employment officers provided the information they needed to pursue their professional goals, some refugees in other studies (Blasko, 2023;Bucken-Knapp, Fakih, & Spehar, 2019;Spehar, 2021) felt that their PES employment officers did not meet their support needs.…”

“…Empirically, the article focuses on highly skilled refugees, who face a unique set of institutional obstacles to employment that require specialized initiatives (Blasko, 2023;Mozetič, 2022b;van Riemsdijk, 2023a;Van Riemsdijk & Axelsson, 2022). The article aims to provide a holistic understanding of the labour market integration process, exploring the governance challenges during the asylum-seeking period, labour market preparation initiatives, and bridging programmes and fast-tracks.…”

Snakes and ladders: An integrative literature review of refugee doctors' workforce integration needs

“…Language was perceived to be an obstacle by refugee doctors in every included study. Specific challenges included a lack of medical language courses, 30,34,38,46 unfamiliar abbreviations, 36 and difficulties understanding patients who ‘did not speak clearly due to their illness, their age or their way of speaking’ 37 . Existing courses were often insufficient for medical language 46 .…”

“…A strong sense of professional pride motivated doctors to overcome challenges towards full integration. 33,34,41,42,44,46 Those who identified as educators relished the opportunity to teach and be appreciated for their teaching, promoting integration. 41 Some refugee doctors had to change 43 or lower 33 their expectations about their future career paths in order to fully integrate:…”