dequalification

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noun

A change so as to require less skill and knowledge, often leading to less responsibility and control.

Scrabble 30

Meanings

noundequalification (usually uncountable, plural dequalifications)

plural dequalifications

  1. uncountableusuallyA change so as to require less skill and knowledge, often leading to less responsibility and control.

    Middle management is particularly threatened with dequalification (reduction in decision-making, supervision and control) .

    1990, Federico Butera, Vittorio Di Martino, Eberhard Köhler, Technological Development and the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
    3 more examples

    According to Braverman's thesis, Taylorism, or scientific management, has been the key feature in the devaluation and dequalification of work.

    2016, Lorraine Giordano, Beyond Taylorism, page 28

    However, here it may be noted that dequalification does often happen when new technologies replace older ones in one and the same field of activity.

    2018, Mats Alvesson, Organization Theory and Technocratic Consciousness

    This implies a dequalification of positions, dequalification which can be either only technical or both technical and social.

    2023, Guglielmo Carchedi, On the Economic Identification of Social Classes
  2. uncountableusuallyThe process by which someone is forced to work below the level of their skills and qualifications.

    Dequalification is an imposed status, hitting women hardest in fields historically dominated by men, e.g., medicine and engineering.

    2008, Joyce Marie Mushaben, The Changing Faces of Citizenship, page 110
    3 more examples

    Along the same lines, it appears that by accepting some degree of occupational dequalification in relation to real educational level, and a more or less precarious situation, most young people managed to find work after leaving school, although for the most part by themselves, the ANPE having little effect and then only in cases of particular difficulty.

    1978, R. A. de Moor, Changing Tertiary Education in Modern European Society: Report, page 187

    They interpret the liberal code reform as an attempt to reduce dequalifications, especially of the young labor force, by avoiding incarceration ( Steinert 1978).

    2016, Joachim J. Savelsberg, Constructing White-Collar Crime, page 20

    Apparently, this has become a common phenomenon in the migration context, as many skilled and highly skilled migrants are being employed in under-qualified positions—a widespread practice which feeds into their dequalification and deskilling.

    2018, Ayhan Kaya, Turkish Origin Migrants and Their Descendants
  3. uncountableusuallyThe change in status from qualifying (for something) to not qualifying.

    One of the consequences of this division was the moralistic dequalification of neutrality by both superpowers.

    2016, Stephen K. Badzik, Josef B. Binter, Karl E. Birnbaum, Towards a Future European Peace Order?, page 121
    2 more examples

    Thus, it is impossible to create any objective standard as to what particular conditions would justify dequalification of the HMO.

    1976, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Subcommittee on Health, Health Maintenance Organization Amendments 1975, page 407

    If the “fiscal requirement” were left open as to content, it would require Fund negotiation ("conditionality" ) of precisely the type that the major rejects — as well as the strong likelihood of periodic dequalifications and requalifications of countries that would be immensely destabilizing.

    2000, Report of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, page 121
  4. uncountableusuallyThe removal of distinctions; homogenization

    This 'dequalification', which is equivalent to a loss of memory, is also a cultural process.

    2012, L. Augustin-Jean, H. Ilbert, N. Saavedra-Rivano, Geographical Indications and International Agricultural Trade
    2 more examples

    For Guattari this democratization is fundamentally capitalist because the systematic dequalification of expression, and its sectorization and bipolarization of values in capitalism, treats everything as formally equal and so 'puts differential qualities and non-discursive intensities under the exclusive control of binary and linear relations.'

    2017, Christopher Braddock, Animism in Art and Performance, page 250

    We may recall the opposition he drew between Temne conceptions of the landscape – a poetics of space – and Western surveying grounded in a massive 'dequalification' of this poetic character.

    2020, Linda Mcdowell, Undoing Place?: A Geographical Reader

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

dequalification. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dequalification

MLA

“dequalification.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dequalification. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dequalification,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dequalification.

Source: dequalification on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.