Career Nomadism and the Building of a Professional Identity in Female Immigrants

Abstract

This article paints a picture of the professional integration of female immigrants in the Quebec City area, a city in which they are a small minority. Our main interest is the obstacles to their socio-professional integration. We attempt to shed light on this reality by giving an overview of the effects that disruptions in a woman's career in general and an immigrant woman's career in particular have in that, as workers in the so-called secondary sector, they are often the first affected by market polarization, our focus is on the intersection of identities that allow us to place the building of a professional identity in these women within its link to the adopted culture. Following is the representation of the obstacles faced by some of the women, approached in the framework of research on their professional integration, and the innovative identity-building strategies used to overcome these obstacles.Résumé Dans cet article, nous dressons un portrait de la situation d'insertion professionnelle des femmes immigrées de la région de Québec, une ville où elles sont très fortement minoritaires: nous nous intéressons en particulier aux obstacles à leur insertion socioprofessionnelle et essayons de mettre cette réalité en lumière à travers un aperçu des impacts qu'ont les bouleversements touchant la carrière des femmes en général et des femmes immigrantes en particulier en ce qu'elles se retrouvent souvent les premières touchées par la polarisation du marché du travail, se retrouvant dans la sphère dite secondaire. Nous nous intéressons ce faisant aux intersections des identités qui nous permettent de situer la construction identitaire professionnelle des femmes dans son lien à la culture d'accueil. La représentation de ces obstacles rencontrés par quelques unes de ces femmes, approchées dans le cadre d'une recherche s'intéressant à leur situation d'insertion professionnelle et aux stratégies identitaires innovatrices impliquées ce faisant, afin de faire face aux différents obstacles rencontrés, suit.

Pathways between under/unemployment and health among racialized immigrant women in Toronto

“…Importantly, it considered activities outside of paid labour not as separate from it but as directly influenced by it. A handful of studies have documented racialized immigrant women's multiple and often concurrent strategies in response to underemployment and precariousness, both in the labour market (Ng et al 2006;Cardu 2007;McCoy and Masuch 2007) and in the household (Creese, Dyck, and McLaren 2008). Our study adds to this literature by documenting how under/unemployment, experienced at the individual and household levels, resulted in the intensification of job search activities and of the household/caregiving work, which carried their own risks for health.…”

The learning migration nexus: towards a conceptual understanding

“…The same applies to work experience abroad' (Schuster, Desiderio & Urso 2013, p. 18). Research has also indicated how lack of relevant social capital contributes to the underemployment and deskilling of migrants (Morrice, 2007;Cardu, 2007). In her study of female migrants, Cardu lists a number of reasons including lack of knowledge of the labour market (where to go, how to make skills known, how to access internships), and lack of networks to help them familiarise themselves with the work culture, such as how to behave during a job interview (Cardu, 2007).…”

Predicting Immigrant Employment Sequences in the First Years of Settlement

“…Although immigrants to Canada do improve their economic standing over time, this has been less pronounced for recent cohorts –scholars now question whether today’s immigrants will ever entirely “catch up” (Frenette and Morissette, 2003; Green and Worswick, 2004; Aydemir and Skuterud, 2005). While the assimilation perspective suggests that early jobs will lead to better employment over time, qualitative research on the Canadian experiences of skilled immigrants portrays such jobs as dead ends (Man, 2004; Cardu, 2007). The low‐level jobs in which many labor not only lack promotion possibilities, but also limit immigrants’ time to invest in education or training and lead to the atrophy of important higher‐level work skills (Pratt, 1999; McCoy and Masuch, 2007).…”