Blog post by Revital Madar, European University Institute, Italy

At the time of writing this text, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza since Hamas attacked the south of Israel on October 7, 2023. It’s a number that one cannot really grasp. Yet, it is a number that spreads terror. Especially when it indicates that this number includes the killing of more than 12,000 children and that, as terrible as these numbers are, they do not include those who were buried under the rubble and people who died because they didn’t have access to medical care and simple essential nutrition and drinking water. 
 
Yet, according to a poll conducted in the middle of January this year, 51% of Israeli Jews consider the Israeli army to be using an appropriate amount of force in Gaza. Another 43% consider the current attack on Gaza not enough, force-wise. A more recent poll (February 12-15, 2024) found that nearly 70% of Jewish Israelis do not support transferring humanitarian aid to Gaza, even if this aid is transferred by international bodies that are not related to Hamas or UNRWA. 

Blog post by Anne-Iris Romens, University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy, and Francesca Vianello, University of Padua, Italy

In the context of the hardening of the political discourse, skilled migrations are presented as one of the few remaining acceptable ways of entering European countries. A recent example is the parliamentary debate in France regarding the adoption of the increasingly restrictive law on immigration, which further limits access to residence permits and social rights.
 
Despite this rhetoric, the knowledge and skills of migrants are rarely valued in the job market. Migrants are mainly forced to accept jobs which enjoy little social recognition. Migrant women, in particular, tend to be confined to low-pay jobs in the care sector, including when they hold university degrees.
 
These examples illustrate the ambiguity of the concept of ‘skills’. The notion works as a social marker according to which some bodies are marked as skilled, and others as unskilled, with class, racialization and gender having a significant impact. In this field, recruiters have a key role in defining whose abilities are to be compensated and whose are to be hidden.