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Volume 7, Issue 3 (SEPTEMBER ISSUE 2026)
johepal 2026, 7(3): 119-133 |
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Tucker A. (2026). Another Brick in the Wall: Credential Recognition, Occupational Closure, and the Persistence of Brain Waste. johepal. 7(3), 119-133. doi:10.66224/johepal.7.3.119
URL: http://johepal.com/article-1-1951-en.html
URL: http://johepal.com/article-1-1951-en.html
Abstract: (7 Views)
Each year, thousands of internationally trained professionals arrive in Canada and other wealthy countries carrying years of education, only to find that their education is quietly set aside at the threshold of the labour market. This article synthesizes the scholarship on that loss, often called brain waste, and asks why it persists despite decades of reform. Drawing together human capital theory, the sociology of professions, segmented labour market theory, the literatures of recognition and epistemic justice, the decolonial critique of knowledge, and the organizational study of decoupling, I argue that the underuse of immigrant skills is less an administrative delay than a structural feature of how professions guard their boundaries and how organizations earn legitimacy. I show that the familiar hope that fair treatment and economic advantage move together rests on a fragile foundation, and that recognizing a credential is never a purely technical act but a decision about whose knowledge a society will allow to count. I close by tracing what the literature settles, what it still contests, and where research attentive to gender, race, and the Global South might go next.
Keywords: Credential Recognition, Brain Waste, Occupational Closure, Malperformative Inclusion, Immigrant Professionals, Precarious Work
Type of Study: Research |
Subject:
Special
Received: 2026/06/17 | Accepted: 2026/09/14 | Published: 2026/09/30
Received: 2026/06/17 | Accepted: 2026/09/14 | Published: 2026/09/30
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