Trapping: An Identity Work Strategy of a Non White Mate Migrant to be Visible in the Workplace

Abstract

We give voice to a unique individual migrant identity story of extraordinary resilience. In this special issue we analyse an identity work strategy which is so far not accounted for in the identity work literature. This paper aims to uncover the identity work of our first author, a non-white male migrant who is a multi-discipline qualified and a tenured public health academic in his early forties but also a product of post-colonial globalisation and thus an artefact of considerable identity work. The evolution of his identity started with his original identity as a Tamil Malaysian boy. We narrate his story of a seemingly never-ending struggle to 'breathe', stay afloat, and achieve visibility in the workplace through a collaborative, reflective autoethnographic process. The array of multi-location identity work across the globe, from trying to find a voice as a third-generation migrant in his own birth country, Malaysia, in the Russian medical society as an aspiring paediatrician, and a first-generation skilled migrant in Australia made our first author a unique case of identity work. The identity work discovered here is of particular significance to this special issue due to the micro, meso and macro-level implications.