The hidden face of discrimination in the global labour market: the case of Zimbabwean highly skilled migrants in the United Kingdom

Although labour migration is an increasingly important topic for both policy and research internationally, relatively little attention has been paid to the historical contexts of certain labour mobilities and movements particularly those from Commonwealth countries to the United Kingdom (UK) or former colonies. Instead, labour migration movements have increasingly been debated within the framework of globalisation and focused on how governments of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are wrestling with tensions between their desire to use skilled migration to be on the winning side in the 'global war for talent' and attempts to outflank rising xenophobia.

This chapter is based on a preliminary study of Zimbabwean highly skilled migrants in the UK which explores the employability challenges that they face in the British labour market. Drawing from interviews with 20 participants, from a wide variety of academic and professional backgrounds (e.g. engineering, [information technology] IT, education), [the authors] highlight the consequent obstacles they face, despite their high levels of human and linguistic capital in the UK context; competences that are historically produced and narrativised in the backdrop of colonialism. [The authors] explore how their experiences and struggles are produced in a notion of broken post-colonial relationships and responsibilities. In this case [the authors] consider the consequent direct and indirect discrimination they encounter which manifests itself in, for example, discriminatory immigration rules and procedures, employer bias, and non-recognition of qualifications and skills.

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