‘They think you’re downgraded’: Transnational lifecourses and the social construction of deskilling among new-EU care and education workers in Ireland

This article examines deskilling among post-accession Polish and Romanian migrants working in care and education in Ireland through a qualitative longitudinal design. Drawing on 12 tertiary-educated participants interviewed across two waves (2023–2026), it develops an account of ‘two deskillings’: objective mismatch and subjective devaluation. Participants encountered objective skills mismatch and qualification non-recognition, with their responses often involving notably transnational resistance to deskilling. Simultaneously, skill was subjectively devalued and contested by colleagues, families, and participants themselves across borders. This subjective devaluation shaped occupational decisions and, in some cases, redirected careers. Theoretically, the article argues that the ‘two deskillings’ should not be understood simply as parallel processes, one ‘real’ and the other merely socially constructed. Objective mismatch and subjective devaluation interact across migrants’ worklife pathways. We examine this interaction through a linked distinction between autonomy and agency. Autonomy refers to substantive freedom and available options; agency to temporally embedded interpretation, projection, and recontextualisation. This allows us to examine how subjective devaluation informs migrants’ responses to deskilling, while their objectively available options shape what those responses can achieve. Our contribution is therefore to theorise deskilling as a single social process shaped by migrants’ uneven capacities for autonomy and agency across the worklife pathway.