"Living in a Bubble": Labor Mobility of Tech Professionals from Serbia to Germany (2016-2022)

Abstract

Why do foreign tech professionals leave highly paid jobs at home and move to the EU? What does their mobility experience tell us about the European governance of labor mobility? Labor migration research on professionals from third countries highlighted their economic motivation and showed that their experience was structured by legal constraints, glass-ceiling effects, and even precarity. I hypothesize that these findings do not provide a full account of their motivations and experiences. Tech professionals migrate to the EU for reasons that are not solely economic and professional and that include lifestyle motivations. To test my hypotheses, I conducted in-depth interviews with tech professionals from Serbia who are holders of the EU Blue Card and currently based in Berlin, as well as with institutional actors of the startup ecosystem of Berlin. I also engaged in non-participant observation of events gathering tech professionals. My results show a particular type of labor mobility that is governed by the institutional framework of the EU Blue Card, local institutional actors in Berlin, but also tech companies, and transnational networks of tech professionals. I show that the mobility experience of foreign tech professionals can be described as "living in a bubble": between privilege and limitation.