Understanding brain waste: Unequal opportunities for skills development between highly skilled women and men, migrants and nonmigrants

Brain waste studies seldom analyse the skills development of tertiary-educated workers according to gender and country of origin. Combining statistical analyses, participatory workshops and 77 qualitative interviews on employment trajectories with highly skilled workers in Switzerland, I offer three contributions. An intersectional perspective reveals unequal opportunities of skills development: Swiss-born men have the highest rates of employment, income and jobs commensurate with their education, followed by foreign-born men, then Swiss-born women and lastly foreign-born women. Second, a multiscalar perspective shows how actions by individuals, families, employers and the state favour or constrain skills advancement among women and men. Individual perceptions of gender roles and unequal childcare responsibilities within couples constrain women's skills development. Further constraints are set by the state and employers' policies and practices regarding migration, childcare, taxation and hiring. Third, a spatial – temporal perspective unveils that gender inequalities arise at particular moments (migration and childbirth) and places (lacking childcare services and limited employment).


| INTRODUCTION
In recent years, scholars have begun to examine the factors affecting tertiary-educated migrants as they attempt to transfer their professional skills to a host society's labour market. Research shows that highly skilled migrants often cannot find work commensurate with their level of education, thus remaining either unemployed or underemployed (Aure, 2013;Chiswick & Miller, 2009;Friedberg, 2000;Riaño, 2011;Pecoraro, 2016), a phenomenon understood as 'brain waste'. This paper focuses on two research gaps pertinent to this topic.
First, migration studies seldom use a comparative perspective to understand how and why the development and application of tertiary-educated individuals' skills varies according to country of origin and gender . Second, information remains scarce on how the actions of individuals, family members, employers and the state interconnect to affect an individual's ability to practise and develop tertiary qualifications. Furthermore, brain waste studies mostly focus on Anglo-Saxon countries. Moreover, mixed methods are seldom used. This paper thus asks: (a) How do gender and country of origin impact tertiary skill development in Switzerland? (b) How do the actions of individuals, families, employers and the state interconnect to produce inequalities of skills development among women and men, migrants and nonmigrants?
With its small population and celebrated knowledge economy, Switzerland makes for an interesting case study. Its dependence on a [Correction added on 27 March 2021, after first online publication: Grant number and keyword 'skills mismatch' have been corrected in this version.] highly skilled labour force has led to a sharp increase in tertiaryeducated migrants (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/European Union, 2015). Nearly 25% of residents-the second-largest population among OECD countries-is foreign born (Swiss Federal Statistical Office [SFSO], 2019a). In 2017, 39% of the foreign-born working-age population had completed a tertiary education. Foreign-born working-age women were more likely than Swiss-born women to have a university education (European Union [EU] born: 44%; non-EU born: 41%; Swiss born: 31%) (SFSO, 2017).
Foreign-born working-age men had similar levels of tertiary education compared with Swiss-born men (EU born: 45%; non-EU born: 40%; Swiss born: 41%) (SFSO, 2017). Mobility and labour rights pertaining to migrants are not homogeneous, and thus, opportunities for skills development differ. Switzerland's immigration regime is characterised by 'dual foreigner's rights': whereas EU nationals enjoy the same residence and working rights as the Swiss (barring voting rights), the Foreign Nationals Act restricts the entry-and subsequent rights-of individuals from outside the EU or 'third-country nationals'.
Moreover, despite gender equality programmes, significant inequalities in skills advancement between women and men still exist (SFSO, 2020). Housework and childcare constrain women from fully mobilising professional skills (Levy & Widmer, 2013). In 2019, women earned less on average than men despite equal qualifications (SFSO, 2020). Switzerland lags behind OECD countries in improving family-related policies, including childcare (Tissot, 2020). Reconciling family and professional life can thus be challenging, particularly for migrants. Furthermore, despite advancements, Switzerland still needs to improve its efforts to fight racial and ethnic discrimination. There is still no general anti-discrimination legislation, the Federal Commission against Racism does not adequately correspond to an equality body, and the Counselling Centres for Victims of Racism are understaffed and underfinanced (Council of Europe, 2020). This paper is divided into seven sections. Section 2 introduces the intersectionality, multiscalar and spatial-temporal perspectives, considered powerful to explain inequalities of skill use and development.
Section 3 presents the mixed methods of statistical analyses of Swiss labour-market data, qualitative interviews on employment trajectories with 77 Swiss-born and foreign-born men and women and participatory workshops. Section 4 presents the results of the statistical study of employment among tertiary-educated individuals in Switzerland by country of origin and gender. Section 5 presents a transversal analysis of the 77 interviews, examining how inequalities in tertiary skills development emerge and intertwine at the individual, couple, employers and state levels of society. Section 6 examines two contrasting cases of binational couples to understand how the division of domestic and paid work influence skills development. Section 7 concludes the paper.

| INTERSECTIONAL, MULTISCALAR AND SPATIAL-TEMPORAL PERSPECTIVES
Do some tertiary-educated ('skilled') individuals face more obstacles in mobilising professional skills than others with equal education? To answer this requires a comparative perspective examining the different experiences of (a) men and women, and (b) migrants and nonmigrants. Using econometric models, Friedberg (2000) compared immigrants with natives in the United States but without considering gender. Similarly, Chiswick and Miller (2009) exclusively studied foreign-born and native men in the United States.
Few studies place the problem of unequal skills development into the wider context of why and how migrant and nonmigrant women and men employ skills. Intersectionality is a promising analytical approach to explain the differentiated possibilities of skills development among migrant and nonmigrant women and men. Theories of intersectionality show how multiple inequalities such as gender, class and ethnicity intersect to shape social positions of privilege and disadvantage (Cho et al., 2013). Here, I focus on gender and country of origin.
The notion of gender refers to societal representations of feminine and masculine identity, for example, men as income earners and women as (often unpaid) caregivers (West & Zimmermann, 1987).
These representations influence how men's and women's skills are valued differently and therefore which professional opportunities are available. Scarborough and Risman (2017) argue that conceptualising gender as a multidimensional structure with individual, interactional and macro levels helps us understand how gender inequalities are simultaneously reproduced and contested. The individual sphere emphasises the processes associated with the development of gendered selves and gendered ways of cognitively perceiving the social world. The interactional level examines how social expectations and stereotypes implicitly frame how we perceive the behaviour of others.
The macro dimension focuses on the material rules and regulations that constrain human activity, such as state legislation, which can alter gender and ethnic inequality. Additionally, the dominant 'gender culture' (Pfau-Effinger, 1998) influences social advancement.
Few studies have used a multiscalar perspective to examine inequalities of skills development. A multiscalar perspective recognises that social processes occurring across multiple scales are interconnected and comprise several actors (Williamson, 2015, p. 17). In a multiscalar analysis, diverse scales are not separate levels of analysis but are mutually constituting (Schiller, 2015(Schiller, , p. 2276. My definition of scale is methodological, and I use it to examine how the actions of individuals, couples, employers and the state interconnect to produce gender inequalities of skill development. Empirically, I give particular attention to the family, which I consider crucial to understand gender inequalities (cf. Kofman & Raghuram, 2005;Riaño, 2012). Researchers show that the most persistent barriers to mobilising women's professional skills lie within the household Tissot, 2020).
Couples are of particular interest. Feminist research shows that the 'gender division of labour' creates skill-development inequalities in dual-career households (Ledin et al., 2007) and affects professional outcomes for women and men (Levy & Widmer, 2013).
Country of origin refers to a foreign-born individual's country of birth. No single concept covers the complexity of the migrant experience. Country of origin relates to experience, whereas the category foreigner refers to rights that nation-states confer to citizens.
Studies show that even naturalised foreigners' skills are valued differentially (Riaño, 2011), and thus, I focus on country of origin. It is particularly important to understand that tertiary skills acquired abroad are sometimes devalued in Switzerland, creating social and employment inequalities. However, as some Swiss statistics refer to the 'foreign born' and others to 'foreign nationals', I use both concepts in the statistical section.
When using country of origin, I distinguish between nonmigrants (Swiss born) and migrants (foreign born) and differentiate the latter between EU and non-EU migrants because they are subject to different citizenship rights (more advantageous to the former). The 1999 Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons between Switzerland and the EU conferred upon citizens of both signatories the right to choose their place of employment and residence within the named territories. The Agreement also provided for the mutual recognition of professional qualifications.
Finally, how should researchers empirically approach the ways in which native-born and foreign-born women and men develop their skills? This requires a process perspective, as employment is a dynamic phenomenon that may fluctuate between stagnation, reorientation and achievement. I use a spatial-temporal perspective with two main concepts: critical moments and critical places (see Riaño et al., 2015). Critical moments are biographical milestones that shape skills development-choosing a career, migration, marriage, childbirth, divorce or retirement, among others. These events can result in 'a loss or gain of privilege, influence or power, and a changed identity and sense of self, as well as changed behaviour' (Glaser et al., 1971, p. 2).
As for critical places, I argue that the importance of a critical moment depends on the particular characteristics of the place where a person lives (e.g., lacking childcare services and employment opportunities and conservative gender culture). In comparison with context, the wider notion of place also incorporates geography (location, size, history, economy and infrastructure), society (institutions, politics and relationships) and culture (norms, values and regimes). With some exceptions (Liversage, 2009), studies of skills development rarely use a spatial-temporal approach. Case studies for the employment-trajectory interviews were chosen based on maximum variation sampling, which selects individuals who represent wide-ranging experiences relating to a particular phenomenon. Tertiary-educated individuals were chosen based on diverse criteria-country of birth, gender, age, family status and residential location.
The study sample was composed of 77 individuals who lived in a household with children, were more than 40 years old (allowing adequate time to study how skills evolve) and who resided in 13 different Swiss cantons (central and peripheral locations, mainly in German-speaking regions). The foreign-born participants had lived in Switzerland for between 10 and 30 years, some had Swiss citizenship, others had permanent residency visas and others 1-year renewable visas (mostly non-EU).
Women are more prevalent in the sample (59%). Men were more reluctant respondents; several suggested that we interview their wives (i.e., those responsible for reconciling family and paid work) instead. Interviewees included 41 Swiss born (24 women and 17 men) and 36 foreign born (21 women and 15 men). Among the foreign born, EU citizens constituted over 40% (nine women and six men) whereas non-EU interviewees constituted nearly 60% (12 women and nine men). Among the foreign born, EU nationals came from Croatia, and Southeast Europe (former Yugoslavia and Turkey). Table 1, migration to Switzerland results from (a) work opportunities, (b) study, (c) marriage and (d) asylum seeking.

As shown in
The differentiated reasons follow general patterns (SFSO, 2019a).
Whereas many interviewed EU citizens enter as labour migrants, non-EU women mostly enter through marriage with a conational or a Swiss citizen. By contrast, many non-EU men are labour migrants, with fewer marriage-based cases. This reflects Switzerland's immigration policy: EU nationals are free to live and work in Switzerland, whereas third-country nationals must arrive as highly skilled immigrants with a job or as family migrants. In practice, many non-EU men receive a high-skilled visa (Table 1) whereas many non-EU women receive a spousal visa and subsequently lack independent residential rights . The migration status of dependants or tied migrants (Raghuram, 2004) shapes professional prospects.
The study participants are trained professionals in social and educational sciences, economics, management, law, health, natural sciences, architecture and engineering. Generally, there are no significant gender-based differences between professional orientations, with the exception of engineering, where (particularly non-EU) men dominate.
Interview participants were approached through personal contacts, leaflet advertising, the snowball method and collaboration with professional associations. As the ability to mobilise tertiary skills in the labour market is related to gendered divisions of housework and paid employment, we conducted separate interviews with both partners to ensure freedom of expression. The bargaining power of an individual within a partnership strongly depends on country of birth . Therefore, three types of couples were studied: (a) Swiss couples (two native Swiss), (b) binational couples (one foreign born and one native Swiss) and (c) migrant couples (both foreign born).

| EMPLOYMENT SITUATIONS OF HIGHLY SKILLED WORKERS BY GENDER AND COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSES OF SWISS STATISTICS
This section presents statistical analyses of different employment situations among tertiary-educated individuals who are full-time employed in the Swiss labour market. Individuals are categorised by gender (women/men) and country of birth (Swiss born/foreign born). When data are available, foreign-born individuals are separated into EU and non-EU nationals. Four statistical indicators are used to understand skill use: employment rates, income, adequacy of paid work according to professional qualifications and employment status. The analysis is based on the assumption that a job commensurate with professional qualifications and adequate salaries and/or leadership positions are optimal settings for utilising and developing tertiary skills.

| Employment and unemployment rates
Employment rates measure the degree of tertiary-educated (foreign born and native) participation in the Swiss labour market. Table 2 shows the percentage of individuals in paid employment in each of the four studied groups. Foreign-born individuals are divided into those born in (a) EU member states, (b) non-EU European states and (c) non-European states. Table 2 reveals a high employment rate among tertiary-educated individuals, which is typical. Switzerland has a relatively high employment rate (80%) compared to other countries (the United States: 56%; Germany: 76%) (Trading Economics, 2020). However, a hierarchy emerges according to gender and country of origin. Native and foreign-born men show higher employment rates than foreign-born women. Foreign-born (non-EU) women experience the lowest rate of employment. The gender gap grows with country of origin: the smallest gap exists between Swiss-born men and women (4%) and the largest between men and women born in non-European countries (20%). Thus, tertiary education per se does not guarantee employment for migrant women. In 2020, Switzerland's unemployment rate 5 (3.2%) was relatively low compared to other countries (the United States: 8%; Germany: 4.4%) (Trading Economics, 2020). As shown in Table 3, country of origin, however, is influential: Swiss men lead the T A B L E 1 Foreign-born study participants: reasons for migrating to Switzerland lowest unemployment rate (2.1%), followed by Swiss women (2.3%), foreign-born men (5.7%) and foreign-born women (9.6%). Gender and country of origin intersect once again to disadvantage women born in non-European countries, yielding the highest unemployment rate (14%).

| Income
The income indicator measures differences in monthly gross salary between tertiary-educated Swiss and foreign individuals with full-time employment. Table 4 shows these differences by type of university and gender. Swiss and foreign men receive the highest income, whereas foreign women are the lowest earners (Table 4). Gender is central in shaping income inequalities, as Swiss women earn less than foreign men. Significantly, having a stable residence permit correlates with having a higher salary (and vice versa), suggesting that migration policies play a key role in shaping migrants' earning potentials. Finally, the gender-based pay gaps shown in Table 4 reflect the general situation in Switzerland. In 2018, men's earnings consistently exceeded those of women. The higher the managerial role, the greater the income gap. For full-time senior managers, the pay gap was 23.2%.
Full-time male academics earned 16.4% more than female colleagues.

| Adequacy of paid work according to professional qualifications
I use the term 'adequacy of paid work' to estimate the extent to which the tertiary educated are able to use their skills in the workplace. Table 5 illustrates the degree to which employment activities are commensurate with the education of the studied groups. Four types of workplace activities are revealed. The first three, 'simple physical tasks', 'practical tasks' and 'complex practical tasks' imply that the applicable skills of tertiary-educated individuals make them overqualified for these positions. Only the fourth type, 'complex problem solving and decision making', matches the qualifications of university-educated individuals.
Overqualification affects all groups to varying degrees, but gender plays a key role in shaping inequalities. Whereas less than two thirds of Swiss and foreign women have jobs commensurate with their skill level (Type 4), more than two thirds of Swiss and foreign men do-in other words, more than 40% of all tertiary-educated women in Switzerland are underemployed. Overall data for 2018 also showed that tertiary-educated women worked in occupations below their educational level more frequently than men (SFSO, 2018c) yet, paradoxically, in 2019, more women graduated with advanced degrees than ever before (SFSO, 2019c). their education than women. Gender and country of birth intersect to make skilled migrant women the most disadvantaged among the four studied groups-they have the lowest incomes and employment rates and occupy the fewest leadership positions. Using a longitudinal perspective, I observe that these patterns of labour-market inequalities have not changed since our statistical analysis in 2008 (Bühler & Riaño, 2014).

| HOW DO UNEQUAL OPPORTUNITIES OF SKILLS DEVELOPMENT ARISE? A MULTISCALAR ANALYSIS
Along with statistical analyses, the qualitative interviews on labourmarket trajectories reveal the powerful role of gender. I uncovered three types of professional integration among the interviewees: (1) employment according to skill level, (2) employment below skill level (i.e., underemployment) and (3)  At an individual level, many interviewees (either consciously or unconsciously) seemed to have internalised the notion that women alone should reconcile unpaid and paid labour, which influences career choices. The Rabenmutter (crow mother), an 'uncaring' mother who prioritises her career over her children, is a culturally powerful symbol.
Furthermore, many highly skilled migrant women arrive in Switzerland with a tertiary education and report feeling the pressure of the 'biological clock'. Having children shortly after migrating to Switzerland constrains their flexibility to study further, learn the language and actively seek employment.
At the couple level, the interviews reveal that in Swiss-German society-even among several highly educated couples-exists the belief that external childcare impacts children negatively. As women handle the majority of childcare responsibilities, it is harder to find often the woman, from entering the labour market because her income will be taxed at the higher earner's top rate.
Most importantly, gender disadvantages intersect with the disadvantages of being foreign born, thus creating more barriers towards skills development for foreign-born women. Also, not all highly skilled workers are equally treated by the Swiss state and by Swiss employers. Their opportunities of skills development depend to a large extent on whether they arrive to Switzerland as an employee, a refugee, a spouse, or a student (Sandoz, 2019). Swiss policy makers see it as essential to support the labour-market integration of refugees, whereas the same is not the case for migrant spouses (Riaño, 2011). Migrant spouses are seen as belonging to the family realm and thus not being the responsibility of the Swiss state. Assistance by the state is thus 'reserved for women who enter the country as refugees, since they are represented as individuals in fragile situations who need public support' (Riaño, 2011(Riaño, , p. 1538. Nationality also makes a difference. Sandoz (2019, p. 240) reports that Swiss employers tend to favour the recruitment of the same year she graduated in Agronomy, where she thought she would face no professional difficulties, given her qualifications and knowledge of German. After Ms. Andersen arrived in Switzerland, they got married, she became pregnant and her husband took over a forestry consulting firm in a small and conservative town. He was entirely committed to his new firm. He was also determined to build a family home, which put pressure on him to earn enough money.
When their first child was born in 1990, she became responsible for childcare in the absence of day care facilities or nearby family networks. Being young, Ms. Andersen felt pressured to adapt to a local culture in which mothers commonly stayed at home. She applied for jobs but found that local candidates were preferred. Applying elsewhere was impossible due to a lack of mobility and scheduling flexibility arising from her childcare responsibilities. In the place where she lived no labour-market integration programmes for highly skilled existed that could help her. By migrating to Switzerland, Ms. Andersen reluctantly entered into a conservative model of gender roles and faced professional dequalification. In retrospect, the couple realised they had never discussed how to distribute household work so that they could both advance their careers. Ms. Andersen says that in Scandinavia she was accustomed to professional couples reconciling family and career without difficulty, and she had assumed things would be the same in Switzerland. Mr. Dürig wrongly assumed that it would be easy for his wife to get a job. Below, both partners reflect on their decisions.

Ms. Andersen:
On childcare: I was almost around the children too much. They could have also developed well in a crèche  . Gender research has largely focused on childbirth and shown that while having a child usually impacts women's careers negatively (Kahn et al., 2014), it often affects men's positively. But including international and internal migration as a critical biographical moment is crucial because it can jeopardise the worth of migrants' skills-research has shown that 'the social and cultural capital of migrants has no universal value per se but is place-specific' (Riaño, 2011(Riaño, , p. 1544cf. Aure, 2013;Chiswick & Miller, 2009 What do these results mean in theoretical and methodological terms? For a start, they advance our theorisation of brain waste and inequalities of skills development: such inequalities of skills utilisation cannot be understood simply as either equality or inequality. There is a complex hierarchy of inequalities, depending considerably on gender and country of birth. Further, tertiary-educated individuals can simultaneously occupy positions of privilege and disadvantage, such as in the case of foreign-born men and native women; or mainly privilege, as in the case of native men; or mainly disadvantage, as in the case of foreign-born women. Studying brain waste from the perspective of intersectionality helps us understand how systems of inequality of skills development emerge, function, and are maintained. Using a multiscalar perspective helps reveal how systems of skills development inequalities emerge and intertwine at the individual, couple, employer and state levels, how can they be contested by the creative agency of groups and individuals and how they can be transformed by the opportune and concerted interventions of state and private actors. Also, using the spatial-temporal perspective of critical moments and critical places allows a spatial and temporal understanding of brain waste. Inequalities of skills development do not simply emerge in abstract contexts but at specific critical moments (cf. Liversage, 2009) and in specific critical places (cf. Aure, 2013). This spatial-temporal perspective deepens our understanding of brain waste and intersectionality. From a methodological point of view, qualitative interviews on employment trajectories appear most effective in addressing intersections of gender and country of origin from a spatial-temporal perspective. Furthermore, participatory Minga workshops not only contributed to validating the research results but also strengthened the recognition of the research participants as experts.
Finally, countries such as Switzerland have large pools of highly qualified foreign personnel available. What is the best way to employ their skills and avoid the loss of their skills? How to transform brain waste into brain gain? Using intersectionality as a framework of analysis highlights the need for practical interventions that target the structures of inequality that create disadvantages in skill use and development; otherwise, they will prove insufficient (cf. Cho et al., 2013). The 2017 survey contains a module on migration, which made an intersectional analysis possible. 2 The ESS is a written survey carried out every 2 years in enterprises in Switzerland. It contains data from 44,600 private and public businesses and institutions, including salaries for 1.7 million employees.