By analysing the childcaring experiences of female skilled workers from South Korea
(hereafter, Korea) in Germany, this paper maintains that the challenges in labour market participation
for highly skilled women, and especially those with children, should be understood in the context
of their encounters with similar and different care and employment regimes between their home
and host countries. On the theoretical level, this research confirms the argument that the migration
of highly skilled workers should be contextualized not from a neoclassical perspective in which the
maximization of economic profits takes priority, but from an institutional point of view in which
social and cultural norms, practices, and policies in both the home and host societies are taken into
consideration. Specifically, through a series of in-depth interviews conducted with skilled female
migrants from Korea, this paper highlights the significance of taking the function of similar and
different caring and employment regimes into account in explaining the challenges faced by highly
skilled migrant women in labour market participation. On the empirical level, this paper sheds light
on the migration experiences of skilled women from Asia as well as the (dis)integration processes of
newcomers from third-national countries in Germany, with a focus on female migrants from Korea.