Migrants’ Human Capital in the Workplace: Challenges and Opportunities for a people-based Strategic Human Resource Management.

In recent years, most countries have been involved into a process of social and cultural integration because of an increasing global immigration. A context where this process becomes more visible is the workplace where migrant workers might be seen in two different ways. On the one hand, when high-skilled they are considered as precious resources that could contribute to the organizational success. On the other hand, when low-skilled, migrant workers often undergo a process of discrimination that if lucky gives them the opportunity to work as manual labourers. This happens mainly because even if most migrants are educated and skilled workers with many years of experience in a specific professional field, they often cannot formally certify their knowledge, because of the difficult life, political and religious conditions that have led them to leave their country. Consequently, organizations cannot fully exploit their huge potential. Given the evidence that knowledge is a precious intangible asset that can make the difference on the market, organizations need to recognize the added value that migrants might bring in terms of strategic performance. In this vein, a crucial role is played by the Human Resource function since it can contribute to design and promote working contexts and practices addressed to support migrants in transferring their prior expertise and in using this knowledge to develop new core skills in the workplace. This becomes a priority to align the peculiar potentialities of migrants with those of their colleagues in line with the wider organizational demands. At a larger extent this effort is mainly consistent with the people-based approach to Strategic Human Resource Management described in the chapter.