‘Just give me a job and I’ll do it well’ – employability as a relational and contextual construct among low educated migrants in Sweden

In employability research, the concept of employability has been problematized for overemphasizing personal agency while neglecting structural factors. This has prompted a focus on employability as created in specific contexts and in relation to others. Delva et al. (2021) argued that Bourdieu's theory of practice is useful for understanding employability in this manner. We use this understanding of employability to make sense of how former refugees with low education reflect upon their pursuit of integration into the Swedish labor market. The study is based on 23 semi-structured interviews that were analyzed thematically using Bourdieu's terms field, doxa, capital, and habitus. The findings indicate that the migrants had difficulties in identifying the doxa for different labor market fields. Their previously acquired capital was often devalued in interactions with Public Employment Service caseworkers. A lack of communication and good relations with caseworkers were associated with alternative ways of navigating through the job-searching process, sometimes co-creating a limited and passive form of habitus. This highlights the relational dynamics in which gatekeepers play a significant role in shaping the migrants' employability. It also underscores the importance of gatekeepers recognizing their role in enhancing migrants' capital to improve their chances in the labor market.