Issues in researching higher education and employability in the context of migration: the case of Zimbabwean highly skilled migrants in the UK

Presented by Juliet Thondhlana (Education), Roda Madziva (Politics) and Simon McGrath (Education)

The last decade has seen an increase in the development of studies and literatures that focus on the interaction between higher education, employability and migration. A range of debates and discourses around improving skilled migration employability as well as graduate employability have emerged. However much of the current discourse and literature around ‘graduate employability’ tends to adopt a narrow human capital and employability view which focuses on what institutions and nations need to do to capture a market for learners/graduates in the global context. What is yet to be fully explored are some of the complex methodological and theoretical offerings of a different type of graduate, the highly skilled migrant who moves in search of graduate employability and the related group of those that undertake higher educational studies in order to enhance their chances of acquiring graduate employability in the host country. Drawing on the example of the Zimbabwean highly skilled migrants to the UK, we adopt a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the lived experiences of such highly skilled migrant groups. In this presentation we share our methodological approaches, the theoretical resources we mobilize as well as some of our key findings so far.