Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to uncover career-related issues that high-skilled female immigrants face and their strategies for rebuilding their careers upon migration for a diverse range of reasons including following a spouse, furthering education and self-initiated expatriation. Design/methodology/approach Using grounded theory to explore this topic, the authors performed 14 in-depth interviews with female immigrants that fit pre-determined inclusion criteria for high-skilled (e.g. educated, gainfully and professionally employed). The study context of immigration is the USA, and the authors performed interviews with high-skilled immigrants from Turkey – an underrepresented nation in the US migrant population. Findings Content analysis of in-depth interviews revealed five primary theoretical themes that captured the career experiences of these individuals: non-linear career entry, career orientation, strong commitment and will to succeed, socialization patterns at work and support network. Integrating these findings with theories on adult learning, the authors developed an experiential learning model of career reconstruction among high-skilled immigrants. Originality/value This study contributes to the global mobility literature by developing an experiential learning theory of careers and taking a gendered perspective to the career experiences of high-skilled female immigrants. It answers the questions: what are the individual and situation factors associated with career success among high-skilled female immigrants? and what is the process that high-skilled immigrants go through to rebuild their careers?
Highlights
The gendered division of labor at home where the male continues to be the primary breadwinner with females holding major responsibility for domestic work and childcare – a difficult task when women have lost their former social networks (Salaff and Greve, 2004, 2006) – leads most women to settle for the domestic path when chances of finding suitable employment are grim. For those who do not accept to settle, like the ones in our sample, domestic and childcare responsibilities create an additional hurdle to manage and overcome that their males counterparts typically do not face. Within this gender-specific background and context, we were interested in capturing the experiences and characteristics of those females that successfully rebuilt their careers from scratch
This is an under-researched population within global mobility research and “...skilled immigration is an area where women’s career experiences remains, up to a certain point, hidden.” (Al Ariss and Crowley-Henry, 2013) Shedding light on this under-researched population, our findings reveal a grounded theory of experiential learning for career reconstruction upon migration leading to seven propositions linking the adult learning process to the five main themes that capture immigrants’ career experiences
While previous studies on the career development of skilled migrants reported on the status drop immediately after migration, talent waste, and downward career mobility (Chiswick et al, 2005; Fossland, 2012; Ressia et al, 2017; Liversage, 2009), we theoretically construed this status collapse as the primary push that drives skilled immigrants, triggering the experiential learning cycle
Summary
Skilled immigrants – with education, experience, and competence levels on par with corporate expatriates - make up a rapidly growing percentage of the global workforce (Gaillard and Gaillard, 1997; Iredale, 2001; Mahroum, 2000; Purkayastha, 2005; Shachar, 2006) and have started to receive attention from international management scholars only recently (Al Ariss & Syed, 2011; Al Ariss et al.; 2012; Cerdin et al, 2014; Syed, 2008), with few studies taking a gendered perspective on the subjective experiences, issues, challenges, and career strategies of high-skilled female immigrants (e.g. Iredale, 2005; Myers and Pringle, 2005; Purkayastha, 2005; Ressia et al, 2017; van den Bergh & Du Plessis, 2012). With this backdrop on the challenges faced by high-skilled female immigrants, the aim of this research is to contribute to the literature on skilled migration by exploring their subjective career experiences as they strive to overcome barriers and establish their careers from scratch, while balancing work and private lives with limited or non-existent organizational support In this qualitative study, we focus on high-skilled females with the assumption that gender plays a unique role and significantly shapes the ways in which immigrants experience and approach their careers (Myers and Pringle, 2005; Yeoh and Willis, 2005). Our paper concludes by developing a series of theoretical propositions for an emergent experiential learning theory of career reconstruction and discussing its theoretical and practical implications for global mobility
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