Highly Skilled International Professionals in Exploitative Labour Regimes: How Conditional Entry, Legal Dependency, and Intersectional Wage Penalties Shape Migrant Labour Markets

This article examines how institutional arrangements shape exploitative labour conditions among highly skilled international professionals, challenging prevailing assumptions that labour exploitation primarily affects low-skilled or irregular workers. Focusing on international professionals living and working in Vienna, the study addresses a central paradox of contemporary migration governance: while states and cities actively compete for global talent, they simultaneously reproduce exploitative conditions: legal, organisational, and identity-based constraints that limit labour mobility, weaken bargaining power, and suppress rights mobilisation. The analysis draws on Social Identity Theory, the Skill Paradox, and the concept of Legal consciousness to examine how highly skilled migrants experience labour market entry, wage-setting, and workplace inequality under conditions of legal dependency and institutional regulation. Empirically, the study is based on 42 semi-structured interviews with highly skilled international professionals and 17 expert interviews with representatives of Austrian labour market institutions and non-governmental organisations, complemented by secondary institutional data. Using reflexive thematic analysis, the study identifies three interrelated mechanisms sustaining exploitative conditions: (1) conditional labour market entry through the systematic downgrading of foreign qualifications; (2) legal and institutional dependency that discourages rights awareness and rights mobilisation; and (3) intersectional wage penalties disproportionately affecting women and non-national professionals. The findings demonstrate labour market conditions that exhibit several characteristics associated with labour exploitation. Labour conditions among highly skilled international professionals are not primarily the result of overt coercion or illegality but are structurally produced through migration regimes, credential recognition practices, and uneven access to legal protection. These mechanisms position skilled migrants along a continuum of labour exploitation characterised by restricted mobility, economic compulsion, and suppressed labour market conflict. By conceptualizing what can be reasonably interpreted as exploitative labour arrangements as an institutional outcome rather than an individual failure, the article contributes to debates on skilled migration, labour market inequality, and migration governance, highlighting the need for policy reforms that better align talent attraction strategies with labour rights, legal empowerment, and social justice.