Refugee Professionals: What are the challenges to their professional reintegration?

Imagine being a doctor, an engineer, or a teacher—forced to leave behind not only your profession, but also your country, your family, and your friends. Then imagine crossing multiple borders and arriving in a host country with professional aspirations, only to discover that your qualifications no longer count, and that you are viewed not as a professional but as a humanitarian burden. This is the lived reality for many forcibly displaced individuals with higher education and professional backgrounds—referred to as refugee professionals, in my recent review article published in Sociology Compass (DOI: 10.1111/soc4.70061).

The review revealed that refugee professionals often find themselves in disadvantaged socioeconomic positions in their host countries—despite their qualifications, resilience, and active efforts to return to their former professions. They struggle to get jobs appropriate to their skill level not because they lack the necessary will or motivation but because they are entangled in a chain of structural barriers—including discrimination, stigmatization, and a lack of professionally tailored integration support.

Discrimination

The literature shows that discrimination emerges as a significant barrier to the labor market integration of refugees—particularly those with professional backgrounds who compete for high-status jobs, often with native applicants. While all refugees and immigrants may experience discrimination to varying degrees, those from distant sociocultural and/or ethno-racial backgrounds—especially when distinguished by visible differences—appear to be disproportionately affected. Shaped and influenced by prevailing sociopolitical discourses, discriminatory and exclusionary practices—especially in hiring decisions made by employers—severely limit refugee professionals’ employment prospects. The consequences often include unemployment, underemployment or overqualification for refugee professionals, particularly for those with ‘visible differences’ such as distinct names, clothing and cultural/religious practices.    

Stigmatization

As forced migrants, refugees—including those with professional backgrounds—are typically received on humanitarian grounds. Given the abrupt and unplanned nature of their displacement, refugee professionals arrive in host countries unprepared to utilize their human capital, requiring tailored integration support to reestablish not only their careers but also their lives. Yet, refugees—regardless of professional expertise—are often viewed as a humanitarian burden rather than a potential resource. Influenced by negative public discourses, they are stigmatized as passive, dependent, and economically unproductive individuals—despite their continuous efforts to reconstruct their unexpectedly shattered professional identities. As a result, the ‘refugee identity’—an institutionally imposed and homogenizing identity—substantially limits their agency to better their circumstances in the labor market.  

Lack of Reintegration Support          

Although most host countries offer some form of integration support, it is often characterized by one-size-fits-all, basic training, falling short to address individual needs, particularly for refugee professionals who require profession-specific language training and labor market orientation. Integration systems that undervalue refugee professionals’ qualifications and fail to provide tailored programs for professional reintegration often place the burden of unemployment on the refugees themselves, indirectly forcing many toward low-skill jobs in the secondary segment of the labor market to achieve two things: fill vacancies that natives avoid and reduce welfare expenditures. In summary, current integration mechanisms prioritize rapid employment over long-term professional reintegration.     

To conclude, refugee professionals face multiple structural barriers—such as discrimination, the stigmatization of their ‘refugee identity,’ and the lack of tailored integration training—that significantly disadvantage them in resuming their abruptly disrupted careers. As highlighted in my literature review, these intersecting challenges severely restrict refugee professionals’ employment prospects and professional mobility. Addressing these issues requires meaningful reforms in both integration policies and public discourse, including new legislation and stronger cooperation between relevant stakeholders. Without such efforts, these challenges may become further entrenched—leaving refugee professionals permanently marginalized.

Successful professional reintegration would benefit not only the affected individuals, but host countries more broadly as refugee professionals can reduce skill shortages—particularly in countries facing aging populations, which is the case for most Western countries. Finally, the review calls for focused research on refugee professionals and their pathways to professional reintegration, given that current scholarship remains limited and fragmented. It particularly suggests that future research pays closer attention to how factors such as ethnicity, race, class, and culture intersect and shape refugee professionals’ integration experiences and professional trajectories.   

Reference:

Botoon, S. (2025). Unveiling Disadvantages Faced by Refugee Professionals: A Review of Intersecting Challenges in Professional Reintegration. Sociology Compass.,DOI: 10.1111/soc4.70061