Everyday Geopolitics, the Valuation of Labour and the Socio-Political Hierarchies of Skill: Polish Nurses in Norway

Although researchers have paid much attention to the global migration of skilled labour and its geographical specificities, relatively few studies have examined the social and political production of labour value in specific historical and social contexts. Most studies of skilled migration have examined movements at the international scale, while feminist scholars have called for building explicit linkages between global processes and finer-grained scales of analysis. This article brings these two bodies of work together through a case study of interactions between Polish and Norwegian nurses in Norwegian nursing homes. I focus on the historical production of Polish labour value in Europe and its reproduction through everyday interactions between Polish nurses and their Norwegian co-workers. In these conversations, existing international inequalities and the devaluation of Polish nursing labour are reproduced, but I also find moments in which Polish nurses question and challenge the devaluation of their skills. In conclusion, I argue that attention to these moments in which longstanding inequalities are challenged can provide opportunities for change.