What happens when a visa category becomes a verdict on your worth? Gracia Liu-Farrer reflects on the ideas and experiences that shaped her influential work on migration, labour markets and the social construction of skill. She is joined by Helena Hof, whose research examines how labels like "high-skilled" and "low-skilled" are assigned, contested and recognised across cities, institutions and borders.
Together, they discuss why skill is never simply what you know or what you can do, how power and place determine whose abilities get recognised, and what it would mean to think about talent as something cultivated rather than possessed.
Guests: Gracia Liu-Farrer, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute of Asian Migration, Waseda University; Helena Hof, Senior Research Fellow, University of Zurich.
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