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The match between education and job is an important indicator of the functioning of the labour market. Overeducation can be described as when an individual’s educational level is higher than the schooling required for his job. Since the college expansion in 1999 in China, more graduates are reported to be found in jobs for which they are overeducated. This thesis focuses on the exploration of the phenomenon of overeducation and its impact on the Chinese labour market. Using longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) from 1989 to 2009, the extent and determinants of overeducation are investigated in Chapter 2. A variety of techniques are employed to study the wage effect of overeducation in the Chinese labour market. Based on the empirical results of this chapter, the extent of overeducation and undereducation in China, using two indexes to define required education, are found to be different. In addition, it is found that males and workers who have urban registration are more likely to be overeducated in both indexes. Furthermore, workers who have less experience tend to be overeducated, which is only found in the mean index. In terms of wage returns to overeducation, time effects indeed play an important role in China. The wage penalty to overeducation becomes smaller and even disappears between overeducated people and correctly educated people after taking unobserved heterogeneity into consideration. Additionally, this chapter attempts to ascertain if there are distinct wage effects of overeducation for different age groups and explores the patterns of wage effects of overeducation over time. The results indicate that different patterns of wage effects of overeducation by age groups and over time can be explained by the education and labour market reform in China since 1978. Chapter 3 explores detailed links between educational mismatch, skill mismatch and job satisfaction in China. Results in this chapter suggest that overeducated people are more satisfied with their workload, working conditions and facilities, their relationship with colleagues and their housing benefits than correctly educated individuals in similar jobs. When educational mismatch and skill mismatch are included simultaneously into the analysis of job satisfaction, skill mismatch demonstrates stronger negative effects on overall job satisfaction and many facets of job satisfaction except for job satisfaction with welfare, workload and commuting distance to job location than educational mismatch, which suggests that firms and policy makers should put more emphasis on improving the match between the labour market’s needs and individuals’ skill levels. Given the important role played by rural-to-urban migrant workers in contemporary China, Chapter 4 provides a picture of education and educational mismatch issues associated with rural-to-urban migrant workers. This chapter contributes to the existing literature on the education of migrant workers by taking the generation of migrant workers into consideration, i.e. we distinguish between an old generation of migrant workers and a new generation of migrant workers. Based on OLS regression, the new generation of migrant workers has higher wage returns to schooling than the old generation of migrant workers. Quantile regression results indicate that the new generation of migrant workers have higher wage returns to schooling in the lower half of the wage distribution (i.e. 10th, 25th and 50th percentiles). Wage effects of undereducation between old and new generation migrant workers exist at the 25th percentile and 75th percentile of the wage distribution. However, distinct wage effects of overeducation between old and new generation migrant workers can only be found in the high end of the wage distribution (90th percentile). In addition, a comparative study of the issue of educational mismatch between rural-to-urban migrant workers and urban residents is made in this chapter. Negative effects of overeducation appear across the wage distribution of urban residents except for the 90th percentile. Positive impact of undereducation on wages can be seen from 25th percentile to 90th percentile. However, for migrant workers, overeducation doesn’t exhibit negative effects on migrant workers on the conditional wage distribution. Wage premiums enjoyed by undereducated migrant workers are only present in the lower and middle part of the wage distribution except for the 90th percentile. This thesis concludes that empirical patterns of overeducation in the literature in terms of the incidence, determinants and wage effects are present in the Chinese labour market. Empirical results in this thesis indicate that overeducation may not result in negative effects on job satisfaction as a priori expectations and skill mismatch is a better indicator to explain job dissatisfaction than educational mismatch. Although there are no significant wage effects of overeducation for migrant workers, the new generation of migrant workers enjoys higher wage returns to education than their older counterparts. This thesis provides strong evidence that enhancing skills to commensurate with the market needs should be the main concern of policy makers if China desires to sustain its economic growth in the future.

Drawing on a concept well-established in social theory, but not yet applied by scholars of migration, namely, the concept of Structures of Feeling, the thesis develops a novel perspective on the role of the context of departure and destination in shaping migration experiences, especially the experience of inclusion and exclusion. The main argument of the thesis is that migration involves a continuous process of migrants interpreting and reinterpreting a country of departure and destination, a process driven by ethics relevant to migrants. The experience of these ethics, largely shaped by the employment trajectories of migrants, can vary depending on a country or locality within it and, therefore, results in different experiences and interpretations of, or simply, different Structures of Feeling in connection with different places. In this process people also interpret and reinterpret themselves and their relationship with different places involved in migration. In this way, Structures of Feeling can affect people’s sense of belonging and their migration decisions, especially decisions regarding settlement. By exploring this phenomenon, the study reveals complex subjective processes involved in migration. This conceptual framework emerged from the qualitative analysis of data from nearly 100 interviews with 50 migrant workers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Poland. The thesis shows that interviewees experienced work and life abroad through the prism of three ethics connected with neoliberalism. Differences in the experiences of these ethics in the country of departure and destination mediated their sense of inclusion and exclusion and gave rise to the dual-idealisations of a place of departure and arrival which, in turn, affected their settlement decisions. Moreover, it is demonstrated that, while these experiences may not seem straightforwardly different across the three destinations taken into account in this study, certain context-specific variations can be identified, too. These are accounted for by the notion of Local Structures of Feeling.

This study focuses on academics, their experiences of work and their academic identities. Over the past three decades, the Higher Education sector in the United Kingdom has been subject to a series of policy initiatives which have dramatically transformed the sector, so that it is barely recognisable from the sector as it existed during the post-war period from 1945 to 1979. This study focuses on the consequences of these changes for the academic labour process by considering the nature of the work performed by academics and how that work is managed and controlled (Braverman 1974). In addition, the missing subjective element of Braverman’s analysis is provided by an evaluation of academic responses and the formation and reformation of academic identities under identity regulation. The research strategy centred on the selection of one pre-1992 university and one post-1992 university for a comparative case study. This study is deliberately focused on the reported experiences of academics, whose major role, is teaching and/or research and not manager academics. Consequently, qualitative research which stresses the socially constructed nature of reality and provides rich descriptions is selected. This study demonstrates that managerialism is deeply entrenched within the university sector. Work intensification continues unabated, whilst academic identities are regulated to achieve managerial objectives which are centred on targets and league tables. Research outputs have been commodified and teaching quality gamed in the new target driven culture pervading the university sector. The intensification of the managerialist impetus with the accompanying loss of academic autonomy and academic voice, is converting universities from institutions of teaching and enquiry to surplus creating business corporations, with academics as wage labourers.

This thesis investigates the lived experience of economic migration of eleven female foreign care workers (FCWs) working in Bologna, Italy. The principal aim of the study is to examine how these women construct their experience of migrating through the stories they tell. The methodology involves semi-structured interviews in which participants reflect on the migration process, their motivations for the move and the difficulties they faced once in Italy. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and then analysed. In the first stage of analysis, similarities and differences in the narratives were identified in order to identify common themes. Subsequently, stories told in the interviews were identified. Positioning theory was employed to explore both what was said and the way in which it was said with close attention paid to the interactive nature of the stories and how they relate to wider societal discourses, especially those regarding care workers in Italy. The findings of this study demonstrate that, even though each migration experience is different, the interviewees share awareness of certain discourses regarding both immigration in Italy and care workers in particular. Through positioning theory I demonstrate how the women resist certain negative discourses in order to alternatively position themselves as making agentive career choices. The findings are discussed with reference to the efficacy of this methodological approach and suggestions for future research.

In this PhD thesis we are investigating topics on international migration and we focus in the case of the UK as a host country. We analyse the implications of restricted and unrestricted migration on the the labour market outcomes and the welfare use of the migrants. In the first chapter we estimate the joint decision over the labour market behavior of an individual and her subsequent welfare use, and attempt to explain how this decision is differentiated between natives and immigrants. We incorporate differences in the purchasing power parities of the home countries and the host country to explain how these differences create different incentives between natives and immigrants. In the second chapter we investigate the effects of the economic crisis on the labour market performance of natives and immigrants in the UK. We assess the unemployment durations of EU and non-EU immigrants, and UK natives for the years before and during the economic crisis of 2008. We find that the unemployment duration of the EU immigrants converged to that of the UK natives, while the non-EU immigrants were the ones affected the most. We also find that the high degree of clustering into specific socioeconomic statuses, drove at a significant degree the unemployment duration outcomes for the EU immigrants. In the third chapter we investigate the job separation rates of immigrants and natives for the periods before and during the economic crisis of 2008. We find that the non-EU immigrants had higher separation rates than the natives and that this gap widened even further for the years during the crisis. The A8 immigrants had higher separation rates than the natives mainly due to early attrition from the survey. Exits towards unemploment or underemployment happened at a lower rate for this immigrant group compared to the natives. The two results combined indicate the importance of out-migration when the labour market outcomes of EU migrants are compared to those of the UK natives.

This research project seeks explanations for an inconsistency between onerously-regulated, stable labour market institutions (LMIs) and everyday employment in the Brazilian variety of capitalism. The study adopts a new institutionalist approach and findings are based upon qualitative research on industrial relations in the construction industry. A key focus of the thesis is upon dynamic institutional interactions, known as complementarities, and their influence upon political processes relevant to labour. This aims to contribute to the understanding of institutional change and continuity during a key juncture in Brazilian development; a period of sustained economic growth and stability, accompanied by falling poverty and inequality under a Workers’ Party (PT) government since 2003. Chapter 1 introduces the new institutionalist approach and why it offers the most appropriate methodological set of tools to address the research problem. Chapter 2 discusses the relevance of the historical period analysed (2003-2015) and discusses the Brazilian variety of capitalism in light of the coordinated, hierarchical and liberal models. Chapter 3 traces the history of LMIs in Brazil and finds an embedded historical legacy still influential in the contemporary workplace. Chapters 4-6 enter into the construction industry case study element of the thesis with chapter 4 an exploratory analysis of employment relations. Networks of mistrust are identified as a source of the inconsistency between the regulated LMI system and reality of employment. Labour representation and regulation are identified as two key issues analysed in more detail in the remaining two chapters (5 and 6). From a new institutional perspective, explanations for the inconsistency identified are found to be related to a composite set of interrelated factors with historical, informal, formal and rational choice elements. The research findings address more reductionist and static accounts as well as some popular misconceptions on the Brazilian LMI system. Within comparative capitalisms debates, Schneider (2013) categorises the Latin American institutional model as hierarchical. A further aim of this research is to extend upon this model with an analysis of LMIs in the Brazilian variety of capitalism. Brazil, in its stable and influential trade union institutions is argued to represent a variation of Schneider’s hierarchical market economy.

This thesis explores the brain drain and its relationship with democratisation and overall human development, including political development, using Libya as a case study. However, its implications are applicable to a wider region of developing countries, especially the Middle East and Africa. The research attempts to make a new contribution to understanding the brain drain phenomenon by empirically testing the possible link between the brain drain and socio-economic and political factors, including the lack of democracy, rule of law and human security. It also critically evaluates the contemporary theories of evaluation of human development based mainly on economical/educational indices, and highlights the limitations of the Human Development Index (HDI), as a measure of human development. A more holistic measure, based on the capability approach that incorporates a wide range of reflective indices including freedom, democratic values and human rights, is advocated. The research also argues in favour of a shift from the brain drain to a ‘brain circulation’ paradigm and from a single ‘return’ option to a possible ‘Diaspora’ option by which the contribution to their countries of origin, of those who have emigrated, need not be measured purely by their permanent return. Although the migration of highly skilled people – ‘human capital flight’ – cannot be physically prevented, the underlying ‘PUSH’ factors should be tackled. These include lack of freedom, human security, democracy, and lack of investment in both education and research and development. They also include better job rewards and conditions. Receiving countries, mainly OECD members, also have a moral responsibility not to create ‘PULL’ factors, such as the incentives of selective immigration policies to attract human capital from developing countries, where it belongs and is badly needed. The new era of globalisation and ICT makes it possible for ‘Diaspora Networks’ to facilitate the contribution of migrants to their source countries. Diaspora migrants with high human capital can engage with home countries and contribute towards developing a strategic vision for overall development. One vital area that Diaspora migrants can contribute to is ‘capacity building’, not just at the individual level but crucially at the institutional and societal level. Diaspora migrants, as ‘experts’ in their fields, can contribute to democratisation, as a transitional process towards democracy, which in turn is beneficial to enhancing human development because democratic countries have demonstrated higher human development than non-democratic ones. Human development, as an outcome, can therefore be an incentive for embarking on democratisation. A process of democratisation that leads to democracy will reduce some of the push factors causing the brain drain and its detrimental consequences.

Migration has been a significant part of the cultural fabric of the Caribbean islands for centuries. The process began with the discovery and conquest of the islands by European colonials, followed by the forced migration of African slaves and the importation of indentured labourers from the East. Since the mid twentieth century, however, Caribbeans have been leaving the islands. Recent census data from Trinidad and Tobago show that the out-migration of women to the global North has exceeded that of men. This research examines the migration of women from the twin-island state of Trinidad and Tobago. Drawing upon interviews with 25 female Trinidadian migrants, the study explores migration to Britain and the United States. I initially seek to answer the why question, by analysing the decision-making process in international migration, and then how women migrate and adapt to a new country and culture. Moreover, I compare migration from Trinidad and Tobago to Britain and the United States, highlighting major similarities and differences in terms of education, race, and employment, which led skilled professional women to migrate to Britain legally while domestic workers settled in the United States illegally. Additionally, I challenge the idea of the forgotten child by presenting a more holistic view of the implications of migration for the left-behind family. I propose that we need to think in terms of a reordering of the Caribbean family unit rather than seeing it, as is common, as a disordered, chaotic institution. I found that the main motivation for women to emigrate is ‘self-sacrifice’ and altruism. Migrant women are disadvantaged and susceptible to various forms of discrimination. Despite this, I argue, women are determined to ‘make it’ through migration in the interest of their families, and they demonstrate their resilience in enduring difficulties in order to create a better future for themselves and their children.