Built-in normativity in tailoring identity: the case of the EU skills profile tool for integrating refugees

Abstract

In current European policy debates, identifying refugee skills is considered to be a significant precondition for matching refugees and jobs and thus for labor market integration. Refugees have diverse skills, and therefore, measures in policy making regarding the integration of refugees need to be flexible and tailor-made. This paper presents an analytical framework to investigate a tension between one-size-fits-all and tailor-made measures that was raised in a meeting of the European Economic and Social Committee in 2017. I investigate whether the EU Skills Profile Tool, which is said to be a powerful tool for making it easier to identify refugees’ skills, would be of a tailor-made type model. Employing diverse accounts of economic models as epistemic mediators, I argue that a built-in normativity of the tool mediates between refugees and their representation, which limits the tailoring of the Tool and leads, nevertheless, to tailoring of refugees, which may also have normative implications in use.