Paper short abstract:

This paper considers how notions of the 'proper job' are complicated in contexts of migration. Foregrounding experiences of Syrian and Ukrainian newcomers in Berlin, Germany, the paper traces how state-level ideas of eligibility and progress collide with newcomers' own future-building projects.

Paper long abstract:

This paper further complicates the notion of the 'proper job' by considering the ways in which newcomers’ employment trajectories and future aspirations collide with state-level labour policies and discourses around migrant and refugee work.

When adult newcomers physically arrive in Germany (refugees and non-EU migrants in particular) they are generally not permitted to formally engage in paid labour. Instead, they undergo an often years-long process of what Gowayed (2022) has termed 'credentialization', during which they are required to learn German and have their degrees and qualifications assessed for their 'eligibility' on the German labour market.

Based on over seven years of ethnographic research within state-run language classrooms and employment offices, I show that while Germany’s extensive integration and professional recognition procedures officially aim to accelerate newcomers’ socioeconomic mobility, in practice, they significantly delay their access to employment, higher education and citizenship (see also Schulte 2024). It is in these spaces of delay, however, where newcomers’ own future-building projects collide with state-level notions of progress and employability. Importantly, these collisions bring discussions of proper employment and ways of making a living to the forefront, revealing a key tension between newcomers’ aspirations for life in Germany and policy and public discursive expectations of ‘suitable’ migrant labour. Drawing on interviews with Syrian and Ukrainian newcomers and observations of their interactions with German state bureaucrats, this paper hones in on these spaces of collision, tracing strategies newcomers employ to attain secure and long-term working conditions.