Season 4, Ep. 9:

Below, you find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.

Media

Liu-Farrer, G., Miyai, T., & Korekawa, Y. (2025, November 18). Japan’s stalled immigration experiment: The uncertain future of a promising approach (external link) . Foreign Affairs.

Books & Book Chapters

Hof, H. (2022). The EU migrant generation in Asia: Middle-class aspirations in Asian global cities. Policy Press.

Hof, H. (2025). ‘White Innovation’: Conceptualizing Changing Racial Hierarchies Through Migrant Entrepreneurship in Singapore and Japan (external link) . In: Lan, S., Debnár, M. (eds) Migration, Transnational Flows, and the Contested Meanings of Race in Asia. IMISCOE Research Series. Springer, Cham. 

Liu-Farrer, G. (2020). Immigrant Japan: Mobility and belonging in an ethno-nationalist society (external link) . Cornell University Press.

Liu-Farrer, G. (2011). Labour migration from China to Japan: International students, transnational migrants (external link) . Routledge.

Liu-Farrer, G. (2013). Making careers in the occupational niche: Chinese students in corporate Japan's transnational business (external link) . In The Cultural Politics of Talent Migration in East Asia (pp. 119-137). Routledge.

Liu-Farrer, G., & Shire, K. (2023). Who are the fittest? The question of skills in national employment systems in an age of global labour mobility (external link) . In The question of skill in cross-border labour mobilities (pp. 69-86). Routledge.

Liu-Farrer, G., & Yeoh, B. S. (Eds.). (2018). Routledge handbook of Asian migrations (external link) . Routledge.

Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism (external link) . W. W. Norton & Company.

Academic Works

Hof, H. (2019). The Eurostars go global: Young Europeans’ migration to Asia for distinction and alternative life paths (external link) . Mobilities, 14(6), 923-939.

Hof, H. (2024). Foreign entrepreneurship in the Japanese startup ecosystem: Can deviance fuel innovation?. (external link)  Contemporary Japan, 1-21.

Hof, H. (2021). Intersections of race and skills in European migration to Asia: Between white cultural capital and “passive whiteness” (external link) . Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44(11), 2113-2134.

Hof, H. (2018). ‘Worklife pathways’ to Singapore and Japan: gender and racial dynamics in Europeans’ mobility to Asia (external link) . Social Science Japan Journal, 21(1), 45-65.

Hof, H., & Alloul, J. (2024). Migratory class-making in global Asian cities: the European mobile middle negotiating ambivalent privilege in Tokyo, Singapore, and Dubai (external link) . Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 50(10), 2491-2509.

Hof, H., Muranaka, A., & Park, J. J. (2024). Employment as an anchor: The prospects of emerging East Asian skilled migration regimes through the lens of migrants’ access to the labor market. (external link)  Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 33(3), 554-576.

Hof, H., & Tseng, Y. F. (2020). When “global talents” struggle to become local workers: The new face of skilled migration to corporate Japan (external link) . Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 29(4), 511-531.

Liu-Farrer, G. (2009). Educationally channeled international labor mobility: Contemporary student migration from China to Japan. (external link)  International migration review, 43(1), 178-204.

Liu-Farrer, G. (2024). (PDF file)  Immigrant Japan: the reality of immigration in a “no-immigration” country. (external link)  Global Society Review, 2, E1-E5.

Liu-Farrer, G. (2023). The logics of staying for highly skilled Asian migrants in Japan. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal (external link) , 32(1), 105-128.

Liu-Farrer, G. (2016). Migration as class-based consumption: The emigration of the rich in contemporary China (external link) . The China Quarterly, 226, 499-518.

Liu-Farrer, G. (2025). Normalizing exceptions and accepting differences: Japan’s pragmatic pathway to becoming an immigrant country (external link) . Contemporary Japan, 1-19.

Liu-Farrer, G. (2025). The social construction of skill in international migration: Perspectives from Asia (external link) . Annual Review of Sociology, 51(2025), 423-440.

Liu-Farrer, G., Green, A. E., Ozgen, C., & Cole, M. A. (2023). Immigration and labor shortages: Learning from Japan and the United Kingdom (external link) . Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 32(2), 336-361.

Liu-Farrer, G., & Hof, H. (2018). Ōtebyō: The problems of Japanese firms and the problematic elite aspirations (external link) . Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies, 34, 65-84.

Liu‐Farrer, G., & Tran, A. H. (2019). Bridging the institutional gaps: International education as a migration industry (external link) . International Migration, 57(3), 235-249.

Liu-Farrer, G., Yeoh, B. S., & Baas, M. (2021). Social construction of skill: An analytical approach toward the question of skill in cross-border labour mobilities (external link) . Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47(10), 2237-2251.

Maggie Perzyna  

Welcome to Borders & Belonging — the podcast that explores migration through bold research, new ideas, and stories that connect those findings to the real world. This season, we’re talking with migration scholars whose ideas have left a lasting mark on the field. Then we dig deeper to uncover the paths that brought them here, the turning points, lived experiences, and insights that shaped the theories redefining how we understand mobility, borders, and belonging. Each scholar has been asked to nominate an up-and-coming researcher whose work they admire. In the chat, established voices and emerging thinkers come together in conversation to explore the connective tissue between the past, present, and future of migration studies. From the personal to the political, from theory to practice, these conversations uncover not just what our guests study, but how their lives and work have helped shape the field, and where they see it heading next… 

Maggie Perzyna  

In this episode, we're exploring the concept of skill as a social construct. On the surface, it seems straightforward, but once you move beyond everyday language, the idea becomes far more complex, especially in the context of migration. Our guest Gracia Liu-Farrer helps us unpack how ideas of skill are defined, valued and contested across borders. She's a professor of sociology at the Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies and director of the Institute of Asian Migration at Waseda University in Japan. But before we explore the broader ideas, we start with the early experiences that set Gracia on the path to the work she's doing today.

Maggie Perzyna  

Gracia's early life was shaped by questions of movement, separation and belonging, growing up just outside one of China's largest cities, she came face to face with how systems and policies can quietly shape everyday family life in China. 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

We had this thing called household registration, and my family was basically split into two. My father worked in Shanghai, and my mom and my sister and I lived in a small town. Even though 70 kilometers away, we we didn't live together for, you know, the first 10 years of my life, and for my parents, it's like 20 years of their marriage. So, it was that kind of split household, and having to travel to Shanghai just a couple of months a year to be able to live with my father, and my father also visited us one or two days a month. That kind of defined my early experience. And I went to Shanghai in early 1980s you know, when I was already kind of in preteen, and Shanghai was very different from my mom's hometown, where I lived for the first 10 years.

Maggie Perzyna  

With her father working away from home, much of the day to day responsibility fell to gracias. Mother, watching this up close, she became deeply aware of the pressure surrounding the family and began to respond in her own quiet way. 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

I was a very obedient child, and was a person that preferred spending a lot of time by myself, because my mom was, you know, was living alone, working as a school teacher, and it was really not easy for her. She had to manage the whole house, and then economically, it was not that easy for anybody at that time. Because of that, you know, I tried not to create trouble, and I spent a lot of time just reading and being by myself. I think for my parents, they probably noticed I was very much kind of there's no equivalent of English, but in Chinese or in Japanese, you have a phrase to describe a child that obedient sounds really passive. But in Chinese called ting hua (听话), you know, like listening to the people obeying the rules. And in Japanese, it will be Orikou-san (お利口さん), is like you always kind of watch out for what's around you and try to behave. In a well behaved child, I would say. 

Maggie Perzyna  

While keeping her head down at home, Gracia’s imagination takes flight. What begins as quiet daydreaming sharpens into an awareness that where you live and whether you can move can shape the course of your life. It starts the gears turning in Gracia’s young mind.

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

When I mentioned that I was a dreamer, I was because I spent a lot of time thinking and fantasizing a different life. And that was actually quite constant before we moved to Shanghai, because I knew how you know life in Shanghai was, by the standard, at that time, much more developed. The material life was much more available and abundant in Shanghai than in a small town that I lived and you could do things in Shanghai you cannot do in small towns. So, yeah, I think a part of my early childhood and also before moving to Shanghai, was there to fantasize of moving to Shanghai. That was actually quite constant. So, it's not just a moment. It was like a long moment of my life, and then witnessing how this mobility made a difference both in my life and my sister's life that really foreshadowed my later interest in migration. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Seeing these patterns up close, Gracia begins to notice how place can quietly shape opportunity. One moment in particular brings that lesson into sharp focus when her sister applies for university. 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

The first time she applied, she took the national entrance examination and she had this score, but in the province we lived, the cutoff score for the college entrance was much higher, and she didn't qualify. She did not get in. And the year after, when we moved to Shanghai, she took the exams again. In China, at that time, the exam was national, so all the students took the same exams everywhere. So, she actually got almost exact scores from the previous year. But because we were in Shanghai and the cutoff score for college entrance was 100 points lower, she entered the college. So, that difference right, being able to enter college, even though you didn't really improve academically, was the moment I realized that where you were born determine your life chances. I think that sort of injustice of immobility really impressed me and also made me wonder why this is the case. So, why you know, when people live in different places, they have different chances and lives will be very different.

Maggie Perzyna  

By high school, Gracia is already finding her voice. She writes for student journals and begins corresponding with pen pals from across the country. One in particular plays a significant role in shaping Gracia's future work. 

Maggie Perzyna  

He was from this small village in Hunan province. The reason why I can maintain our correspondence was because he was a great writer. Every time I just enjoyed reading his letters so much we talked about going to college and dreams and ambitions. So, yeah, he was a great pen pal. But, you know, I realized that our lives were very different when I entered high school. Between junior high school and high school, we had a long summer, so I spent all summer hanging out, but he was working as a migrant worker, domestic migrant worker, building, you know, constructing a road somewhere. He told me that it was basically 12 hour work days. He said, after the summer, because he didn't write letters during the summer. He had a long letter describing his summer, and he said that his hair started falling because it was too much, and he lost a lot of weight. It was really hard labour. I was quite shocked, you know, when I read that letter. And also, he did not actually go on to high school. Instead, he applied for this sort of vocational school for teacher training, and he said, because of the household registration, he he needed to leave his village and going to this teacher's training, it was a quicker pass for him to reach that goal, so he ended up going to the capital of the small region. And after that, our paths just went very different ways, and our correspondence became less. It was just very painful for him to realize the difference, and that was also painful for me. I was very sad and disappointed that, you know, he stopped writing. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Years later, when Gracia begins graduate studies at the University of Chicago, her path into academia is far from certain, but as she spends more time with the work, uncertainty gives way to a growing sense that research is exactly where she belongs. 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

I was not very good student at the beginning when I entered graduate school because I did not have the writing skill or my English was not good enough to deal with that kind of very heavy academic workload, but gradually, you know, I felt very intellectually stimulated, and especially when I read more sociological text, and it just made me very interested. And when I started doing my Master's Thesis, I found, wow, this is something that's interesting, you know, doing research, and that's when I thought that I probably wanted to continue, and besides, I was not the very good corporate employee, because it did not excite me. 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

Ultimately, Gracia hopes that she's left an impact on the people she's crossed paths with. Equally as important, she wishes that her contributions to migration studies, especially in Asia, have a long lasting effect. For her, the impact of a career is measured not only through research, but through the relationships and life lived along the way. 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

I want to be remembered as a kind and generous person. I don't have a lot of friends, but for those friends, I think that I want to be remembered as you know, I'm a good friend, a good mother and good wife, of course. Academically, my research is very much about immigration in Japan. I hope that people remember me as somebody who actually contributed to the migration studies in Japan and, if not more broadly, in Asia. I hope my work will still be read by some people in the future. I wrote this book, Immigrant Japan, partially because I wanted to kind of change people's mind about what Japan is and it could be. And so, I hope you know, some people in the future will still read the book.

Maggie Perzyna  

For Gracia, the labels that matter most are deeply human ones. They're not fixed titles or measures of skill, but reflections of a life and career that continue to evolve, adapt and grow.

Maggie Perzyna  

Gracia has given us a glimpse of her life and how her early experiences shaped her work. Now joining the conversation is Dr Helena Hoff, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Zurich and the Asia Research Institute in Singapore. Helena studies how labels like high-skilled or low-skilled come to life in different places. Together, she and Gracia explore what it really means to be seen as skilled, and how those ideas shape people's lives and futures. Welcome to you both!

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

Thank you for having us, Maggie

Helena Hoff  

Oh, welcome everyone. 

Maggie Perzyna  

So, when you think about the word skill, what personal experiences or moments come to mind that shape how you each approach this concept in your work? Gracia, let's start with you. 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

I will say that I started to question the notion of skill as early as when I graduated from University in China. Even though I went to one of the top universities there, when I graduated, we were all looking for jobs, and I felt that I didn't have any skill at all. At that time to get a job, having the education credentials were not sufficient. You know, you had to have social connections. You also, preferably needed to be a man to qualify for some positions. But once you have a job, you might not even have the skill to do it. And I was also looking for jobs, but going through all those advertised positions, I felt hopeless because I didn't think I had any of the skills they asked for. I ended up applying to be a receptionist at an American company, thinking that maybe as the English major, I could at least answer phone calls. I worked for that company for over a year, and I think I was the worst receptionist and secretary they had. That was the moment I felt like my education and my skill did not connect at all, and later on, when I migrated internationally, every time I crossed a national border, I found whatever I had learned and acquired before I came, they all became useless. When I landed in Japan, for example, even though I had a master's degree, I couldn't speak Japanese, so I didn't have the courage to look for jobs and also with a master's degree in education from a prestigious university in the U,. I couldn't qualify to be an English teacher in Japan because I didn't look the part. I didn't have the biography. So, all these personal experiences helped me understand at least education and skills, they're not necessarily the same. And also what skills are and how they are used depend on you know, where you use them, right, and whether your employers are willing to give you a chance to develop them. 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

Helena?

Helena Hoff  

For me, it was in some ways similar that after my BA degree, I also didn't really know what to do. And so, what is typical then in Germany is move on to a master's degree, which I didn't really want to do, and so I did an internship. It's called the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Tokyo, and this was an extremely interesting experience, because it was a largely Japanese environment. But then the heads of this institution were Germans. And then I realized at some point that my fellow interns, they all did some part-time work, and they all did English teaching. And I was quite startled, because now I was a native English speaker. And I think this is where I started to get interested in the ways how people were able or were utilized to do specific jobs that, for example, had to do with language, or how people could even use that as an opportunity to get a footstep into a labour market. So, this was, yeah, interesting for me. And instead of actually helping me to find an idea about what I wanted to work in the private sector, that internship helped me to think about I actually wanted to understand how workplaces are shaped, how labour markets function, how people are assessed on their skills. So, I started studying young Europeans who moved to Japan and to Singapore in that sense, and who were just starting out with their first jobs. So, it is really this interest in what can people do and how are they being assessed, what are also their motivations? Whenever someone asked me what I was studying, what my research was about, and I told them about young Europeans in Asia, everyone was like, Ah, okay, you're studying expats. And this again, then raised my interest into who are these people and why does everyone want to put them into the box of an expatriate, which is so much related to how skills are perceived and how skills hide other things. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Gracia, you've spent years studying how migrants navigate labour markets across different countries, what first made you question the idea that skill is something objective or universally recognized? 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

I think my personal experience have already made me realize that. So, I never thought skill was something objective or universally recognized. You know, I first studied Chinese migrants in Japan in the early 2000s. So, your history in China, whatever skills or positions you had, no longer matters when you come to Japan. Basically, that's the story, the narrative all migrants I interviewed told me, so you start all over again from zero, I met people who were university lecturers or court judges, but in Japan, they were washing dishes. On the other hand, you know, a migrant who didn't have a high school degree or legal documents that I interviewed at that time, was in charge of a store in one of the wholesale retail markets in Japan because he spoke good Japanese and learned the business skills very quickly. So, I think it really depends on where you are, and you know what kind of skills that the job requires. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Helena, your research looks closely at how cities, employers, and institutions label people as skilled or unskilled. What surprised you most about how these labels get assigned in practice? 

Helena Hoff  

I think we can say there is paradox regarding these two poles of the idea that either there are people who are highly skilled and then there are people who are low skilled, or there are high skills or low skills, and then a whole way of differentiation in between. And this is partly speaking of the cities that I study. This is also accented by the fact that these cities are global metropoles, so they have a variety of jobs in, for example, knowledge intensive fields or science or related to international trade. And then at the same time, these cities also need a lot of manual labour and service sector work, which attracts people, because there are always jobs in these fields. And these are actually what keeps the life in these cities up and running. But then what I'm repeatedly surprised about is that the idea of these high skills, and also low skills, are often kind of uncontroversial. They're just accepted as a matter of fact. For example, just the name of a company can mean that person is immediately accepted as someone with high skills. The same is done, often true for others. So, certain occupations that are pushed into this unskilled or less-skilled corner. So, for example, if you think about construction work, who of us would know how to build a multi-story building or how to fix a water pipe that supplies a whole street? But still, construction work is often seen as low-skilled, and I think it's rarely questioned how that idea and that assumption has come about. 

Maggie Perzyna  

You both show that being seen as skilled is often less about a person's abilities and more about power, place and politics. Gracia, how do you see these dynamics play out in everyday life for migrants? 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

I think you know for migrants, there are a lot of things that really matter. For example, the migrant I mentioned, who worked as a salesperson, who was in charge of a store in one of the markets in Japan, he lived in Japan for eight years. He came when he was 18, at a time when Japan really needed labour, so he was a sought after because no other Japanese people were willing to work in Tsukiji at like three o'clock in the morning. His employer found a place for him, and publicly, he even took the employer's family name, so he was called a Japanese name. Then in 2003, when Japan had this campaign against illegal migration, he was arrested and deported because he didn't have the papers. Japan says the country needs skills, needs the labour, but a person who actually does have the skills and who's willing to work on the jobs that this person no longer wants to do because he doesn't have the paper, and all of a sudden, you know, the Japanese, the government, decides that they want to get rid of these people. I really think it's a precarious situation for the migrants. So, it's not really about a person's ability, more about, you know, what category he is in and how the country sees him, or whether the country needs him or does not need him. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Helena, what have you observed in your work? 

Helena Hoff  

I guess this idea of that states have, but also employers, and also citizens of the receiving societies have, of migrants, of specific migrants, also that immediately basically judge if these people are skilled or less skilled, are very hard to get away with. So, the very kind of obvious and easy to judge factors, often the country of origin, but also, of course, the passport and the power of the passport, depending on if these people come, for example, from the Global North or South, but also physical attributes and foreign accents, they are often the obvious markers that quite quickly judge and assess what people then are actually allowed to do, or what they are thought of. If, for example, they are thought of as people who contribute economically or socially to the country, or if they are thought of as people who might feed on the welfare system. For example, the typical example of a woman who follows the husband and who basically receives a dependent visa, spouse visa, which immediately places her at a disadvantage because she is not assessed, maybe on what her skills are, but on the fact that she has a visa that, again, would need someone to sponsor her a work visa. It can, of course, happen the other way around, but we know, especially with caring responsibilities, this is a typical case. Another one would be the migration industry that channels people into specific occupations or jobs that might actually be quite different from what people have done before, and which just don't allow them to be recognized for previous qualifications they have. So, moving out of that status that people are assigned upon entry, like the migration channel, that's I think, one of the critical issues where power and politics come in. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Gracia, you've written about how skill is something people perform and negotiate. Can you share a moment from your field work when this became especially clear to you? 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

You know, this is really a difficult question. I think you know, skill is always performed, right? Because, you know, it's performed through what you do as a job, and something that you learn, you acquire through a job. For example, in Japan, many international students want to stay in Japan, but they don't have, necessarily have the so-called skills to work on the jobs. So, in order to stay in Japan, they might go to some categories of jobs that they are not even trained to do, but they're willing to apply, because those people need workers. So for example, a lot of Chinese women end up working on IT jobs, even though they're not trained, and all that sort of border crossing or boundary crossing kind of situations, I think, you know, made me realize that skill is a much, much more fluid, rather than something that one has. In that sense, you know, it's a process of negotiation. The negotiation takes place between what you are willing to do and what you can do, and so it's something that's much more flexible and constructive.

Maggie Perzyna  

Helena, your work often follows people on the ground as they try to make their qualifications matter. Where do you see your findings intersect with or build on? Gracias, work on mobility, education and labour markets?

Helena Hoff  

So, I recently finished a project that examined migrant startup founders in Tokyo and in Singapore, and it especially inquired into these questions of the skills these people have, how they are assessed by states and by client companies. As Gracia's work has highlighted that skills are socially constructed by actors in the specific local and global contexts, but also by the recognition that really differs by nation, migration policies and by labour market regimes. That's something that really comes out in this research. So, it was a very ethnographic project, and these startup founders they operate their businesses in high growth sectors, for example, in the IT or in the financial consulting industry. They often use AI. So, very progressive industries, in that sense. So, first of all, education, we've talked about it already, and the place of obtaining a degree, they really matter also in this industry. So, a lot of the migrants in this research, they come from Asian countries, or they have ethnic origin, but they have, for example, obtained a degree from a US institution, or they have work experience in Silicon Valley. So, these are immediately seen because of Silicon Valley being the cradle, basically, of much of innovation and symbolic for startup culture, these were immediately points that allowed people to enter the startup ecosystem in these two cities from a very different, or from a higher base level, you could say. And both in Singapore and Tokyo, governments and also private sector firms have tried to imitate basically a Silicon Valley success and an ecosystem and here we can see how this then transferred to Tokyo or to Singapore. It really matters. The context matters a lot. So, one a Chinese woman with a Chinese passport, but who has been partly raised in the US and who graduated from an Ivy League school, who has work experience as a coder in Silicon Valley, and who then came to Japan to open English language using coding bootcamp in Japan. And in many ways, she really symbolizes what people see in the potentially successful, in the highly skilled person and potentially successful startup founder. But here again, as a woman and as a Chinese woman, although she had these credentials from the US, she didn't really fit in there, again. For a Chinese startup community that is also kind of flourishing in Tokyo, where, again, she was not really seen as one of the insiders. So, interestingly, in this research, the performance of skills really varied depending on who, what kind of communities, for example, these people wanted to enter or thought were important for them and for their business success that they were accepted in these communities, and we can see how labour market institutions, skills and cultural capital, like language, but then also this symbolic value, also of having connection to Western based ecosystems, how all of them played a role, and how people really tried to negotiate and also circumvent those barriers which they just can't cross, for example, if it's about language skills or about having long-term connections in the country.

Maggie Perzyna  

So just as a final question, maybe we'll zoom out a little bit. If we look at the global competition for talent. What do you think the public often gets wrong about who counts as skilled and why? Helena?

Helena Hoff  

I think there are several issues here. The first one is probably that often people think skills are objectively assessed. And this is something where I feel migration research could do a better job in sharing what we find about how skills are constructed. And this is connected also to labour market institutions, they work rather implicitly for someone who has never thought about how migrants are assessed and recognized. And another one that I think I've been more concerned about in recent years is that migration has become so politicized that we see rising nationalism, for example, around the world, also in traditional immigration countries. That used to be more open to immigration, rather than just temporary migration, and this also has changed the reception of people like who is being accepted and based on which skills and who is consequently, then seen as a so-called talent. So, people might now more easily be seen as someone who is, for example, taking away jobs. Whose presence leads to social tensions, and in that case, they're more likely either to be seen, not maybe, to be seen as skilled, or even if their qualifications or their contributions are recognized, their rights and length of time in the country might be more restricted. So, geopolitics are something important that I think is not so clear for someone who hasn't worked on these issues, and which might lead to misrecognition of the issue by the public. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Gracia, any final thoughts? 

Helena Hoff  

Yeah, I think the public tends to associate skills with education, right? And, you know, that's the easiest kind of a criterion that people can think of. Who counts as talent. Somehow, the talent is a person that has all the sort of credentials, and, you know, a sought after kind of abilities or skills. And the other thing is, I think both in terms of kind of policy of selection, as well as in the public, when people think of talent, people think of skills as something one has or does not have. But in a domestic market, people don't think of skill that way. Don't think of talent that way. People think of talent, something you cultivate, you build, right? But somehow, when it goes to the kind of immigration policy about foreign workers, people tend to think of that as a static. So, I think those sort of notions are in the sense, that very rigid notion of skill is really something that the public tends to have it wrong.

Maggie Perzyna  

I think that's a great point and a great place to stop. But before I let you go, we're going to do a quick lightning round. I'm going to throw out some questions, and then just give me the first thing that comes to mind. Okay? 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

Okay. 

Helena Hoff  

Yep.

Maggie Perzyna  

Okay, Gracia, what is your favorite book?

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

Oh, that's a that actually is a very, very difficult question, and nothing comes to mind. I'm sorry. I think Helena goes, you go first.

Maggie Perzyna  

No, take, take your take a second. Take a second. Helena? Anything? 

Helena Hoff  

The Corrosion of Character (1998), so Richard Sennett,.It's quite old, like 20 years by now. I think at least that's one of the things I have in mind.

Magdalena Perzyna  

I always laugh, I'm just doing this to cultivate my reading list. So I haven't heard of that one. Gracia, anything. Or do you want to skip it and go on?

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

I think I want to skip it. I have too many. And usually my favorite books are not books related to my work,

Maggie Perzyna  

But that's okay. That's okay. A lot of people have come with just like the best novel they've read. There's a there's a huge range this season.

Magdalena Perzyna  

Next question, what policy buzzword should disappear?

Helena Hoff  

I'm actually not sure if it appears in the same way in English language, but in German, it's the re-migration as it's called.

Maggie Perzyna  

Gracia?

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

I think I tend to think people should not really use skill.

Maggie Perzyna  

Okay, favorite place that you've done field work or research, Helena?

Helena Hoff  

Probably Singapore. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Gracia? 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

I think right now is Indonesia. I really like the country, like the people there and enjoy the field work.

Maggie Perzyna  

And for the last one, what's one thing about you that you can't learn from your CV? Helena?

Helena Hoff  

My urge to leave Germany brought me into a lot of interesting moments and places and encounters with people that led to, I think what I'm doing now.

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

Or I don't know if Helena will be comfortable with me sharing some of her secrets, but Helena is a dancer, right? Yes, so I'm sure I've never seen you dance, but you dance. I assume that's your hobby, and it's, I think it's a great hobby that you have that I don't have. I actually cook.

Maggie Perzyna  

What kind of food?

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

I cook? All kinds all kinds of foods. Yeah, I people tend to assume they want to come to my house, and they assume that I will cook Chinese food, right? Because I was born and grew up in China, but it's almost never the case.

Helena Hoff  

I just wanted to say, I think I've been to your place a few times, but never for Chinese food, but always very good.

Maggie Perzyna  

Well, thank you both. That was an amazing conversation. I really appreciate it.

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

Well, thank you. Thank you. Yes.

Helena Hoff  

Thank you. 

Helena Hoff  

It was fun. 

Gracia Liu-Farrer  

Yeah, it was.

Maggie Perzyna  

Thanks so much to Gracia and Helena for joining me today, and thank you for listening. This episode was produced by Toronto Metropolitan University journalism student, Kristian Cuaresma, alongside executive producer Angela Glover. Special thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and CERC Migration for making this conversation possible.