Immigrants and Meanings of Work: Communicating Life and Career Transitions

Abstract

This first-of-its-kind book uniquely captures the meanings of work expressed by immigrants. Their stories – from work histories to life transitions and professional journeys – are conscientiously and rigorously mapped by the academic insights of communication scholars, many of whom are immigrants themselves.
Immigrant workers’ narratives of work and its nuances in an adopted country offer many hitherto muted, invisible, and/or purposely silenced perspectives. A variety of new and familiar terms – concepts such as career inheritance, aphorisms, cultural adaptation, acculturation, and cultural distance – and culture-specific terms such as "ganas" and "consejos" are discussed alongside the inherent struggles of identity construction
across borders. While the contributors represent diversity in co-cultural affiliations, national origin, and immigration experiences encountered both personally and professionally, the stories of immigrants represent an even larger number of countries and cultures. This volume compels the academic community to acknowledge immigrants as workers whose voices matter and whose sense and processes of meaning-making are nuanced, complex, and multi-dimensional. Immigrant workers’ voices can contribute significantly to the growth of research in organizational communication, meanings of work, career studies, cross-cultural management, psychology of work, and work and society.

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Shenoy-Packer, Suchitra / Gabor, Elena (eds.)
Immigrant Workers and Meanings of Work
Communicating Life and Career Transitions
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2016. X, 159 pp.
Print: ISBN 978-1-4331-2829-5 pb. (Softcover)
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Book synopsis
This first-of-its-kind book uniquely captures the meanings of work expressed by immigrants. Their stories – from work histories to life transitions
and professional journeys – are conscientiously and rigorously mapped by the academic insights of communication scholars, many of whom are
immigrants themselves.
Immigrant workers’ narratives of work and its nuances in an adopted country offer many hitherto muted, invisible, and/or purposely silenced
perspectives. A variety of new and familiar terms – concepts such as career inheritance, aphorisms, cultural adaptation, acculturation, and
cultural distance – and culture-specific terms such as ganas and consejos are discussed alongside the inherent struggles of identity construction
across borders.
While the contributors represent diversity in co-cultural affiliations, national origin, and immigration experiences encountered both personally and
professionally, the stories of immigrants represent an even larger number of countries and cultures.
This volume compels the academic community to acknowledge immigrants as workers whose voices matter and whose sense and processes
of meaning-making is nuanced, complex, and multi-dimensional. Immigrant workers’ voices can contribute significantly to the rich growth of
research in organizational communication, meanings of work, career studies, cross-cultural management, psychology of work, and work and
society.
Contents
Contents: Suchitra Shenoy-Packer/Elena Gabor: Introduction. – K. Peter Kuchinke: International Migration and the Meanings of Work: A
Cross-Cultural Perspective – Hannele Välipakka/Cheng Zeng/Malgorzata Lahti/Stephen Croucher: Experiencing Cultural Contact at Work: An
Exploration of Immigrants’ Perceptions of Work in Finland – Dini M. Homsey/Ryan S. Bisel: Subtle Meaning Evolutions in the Meaning of Work
for a Lebanese American Community – Rahul Mitra: Immigrants’ Negotiations of Career Inheritance: A (Dis)placement Framework – Yvonne
J. Montoya: The Inheritance My Daddy Gave Me: A Glimpse into Mexican Immigrants’ Conceptualizations of Meaningful Work – Flor Leos
Madero: The Labor of Identity Development: Work Lessons from Immigrant Parents – Suchitra Shenoy-Packer: Discontinuities and Dislocations:
Immigrant Meanings of Work during Ambivalent Work-Life «Choices» – Yea-Wen Chen/Brandi Lawless: Immigrant Women Negotiating
Shifting Meanings of Work and Confronting Micro-aggressions with/in the Ivory Tower. – Elena Gabor: Meanings of Work and Emotions of
Immigrant Women Engineers in the United States. – Somava Pande/Pamela J. Bettis: In Search of My Niche: International Teaching Assistants’
Negotiation with Meanings of Work – Stacey M. B. Wieland/Bryleigh Loughlin: From Longing to Work to Loving Retirement: Changing Meanings
of Work of a Latvian American in Sweden.
About the author(s)/editor(s)
Suchitra Shenoy-Packer (PhD, Purdue University) is an independent research scholar and management consultant. She is the author of India’s
Working Women and Career Discourses: Society, Socialization, and Agency, and co-author of Intercultural Communication in Everyday Life. Her
peer-reviewed work has been published in Management Communication Quarterly, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication,
and the Journal of Communication and Religion, among others.
Elena Gabor (PhD, Purdue University) is an associate professor at Bradley University. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such
as Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal (Highly Commended Paper Award, 2013), the Journal of
Ethnographic and Qualitative Research, and Intercultural Communication Studies, among others.