This thesis project examined underemployment at the state and national levels. Underemployment is the inability of highly skilled migrants with degrees from their home countries to enter the workforce in the receiving country. Pending and enacted legislation was analyzed at the state level to determine in which ways the state of Oregon can implement similar policies to effectively incorporate underemployed immigrants into the state workforce. This project utilized primary data sources at the state and federal level, migrant interviews were used as illustrations of the barriers that exist for underemployed migrants, and secondary data sources from the fields of economics, social sciences, political sciences, and population studies were utilized to provide an understanding of how underemployment is addressed at the national level. Overall, my research found underemployed professional migrants are greatly underutilized, which translates into missed economic opportunities for individual migrants and for the United States as a whole.

The main aim of this thesis is to examine the educational and occupational structure of non-EU labour migration to the Czech Republic. Using insights from human capital theory and the sociology of migration this thesis explores the extent to which there is an educational-occupational mismatch among non-EU migrant workers in the Czech Republic. This thesis uses currently available statistical data and evidence from qualitative and quantitative sociological studies. The dissertation exploits data from two unique surveys conducted by the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in 2006 and 2010.