Beyond Segmentation—Flexibilised Jobs, Work-Devaluation and Migrant Labour in Adult Education in Austria

Abstract The paper examines the international migration of education professionals in the context of neoliberal restructuring and the flexibilisation of welfare. While existing research emphasises the over-representation of foreign citizen workers in lower-paid, lower status labour-market segments of education and welfare, this paper proposes that inequalities may also arise and should be scrutinised within these segments, comprised of foreign citizens and nationals alike. Focusing on the deregulated sector of adult education for refugees, migrants and the unemployed in Austria, our paper explores the construction of skills and professionalism in the field, and the consequences on everyday work conditions of these workers. Our analysis relies on qualitative data collected since 2021, through fieldwork that includes long-term participant observation in two adult education institutions in Vienna, as well as 41 semi-structured qualitative interviews. The analysis reveals various career pathways channelling the workforce into publicly funded adult education in Austria: former schoolteachers arriving from severely under-resourced public education systems of CEE countries are joined by early-career teachers and career-changer professionals, both groups being predominantly Austrian citizens. We found that while very low hourly wages affect all workers irrespective of citizenship, transnational migration and associated resources and valuation frameworks still imply severe inequalities within the field, manifesting in differences of workloads and of career mobility prospects. This perspective complements the existing research on work conditions of migrants in feminised professions of welfare and education, reveals the operation of migration-related inequalities on a previously under-researched sub-organisational scale and draws attention to various interlocking processes of work devaluation beyond the migrant-citizen binary.