The Social Construction of Skill in International Migration: Perspectives from Asia

Skill-based selective migration policies are a dominant contemporary form of migration governance in labor receiving countries. Researchers have critiqued these policies, noting discrepancies between their intended goals and the actual labor market outcomes for immigrants. The social construction of skill offers a sociological interpretation of this migration phenomenon, emphasizing that skills and their categorization in international migration are intrinsically political. Skills are socially constructed by actors in specific local, national, transnational, and global contexts. This article reviews scholarship that explores these dynamics from Asian perspectives. It identifies the various positions that countries in Asia occupy in skill mobility and highlights the critical issues related to both outbound and inbound skill migration in this region, as well as intraregional mobilities. The concluding section cautions against a reproduction of skill hierarchy in social science research and advocates a social construction approach to analyzing skill mobilities in different world regions.