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Can I come as I am? Refugees' vocational identity threats, coping, and growth
Abstract
Trying to re-establish their lives in a host country, refugees face multiple integration barriers in relation to work and society. This study, derived from 31 semi-structured interviews with refugees residing in Germany, explores how these barriers also threaten refugees' fundamental identity needs for worth, distinctiveness, continuity, and control. Faced with such threats, refugees tried both to protect their previous identities and/or to restructure them to adjust to their new situation. Findings also highlight identity threat jujitsu to both support refugees' identity protection and create better connections between themselves and their environments. Further, we point to resourcing as a form of buffering potential future hardships. Finally, both refugees' resourcing and coping with adversity were related to the potential for psychological growth. This study offers new insights into how transition experiences impact refugees' personal and career-related growth in the new country.
... Pourtant, elle apparait comme objectif politique central dans l'accueil de réfugié-es (Ager & Strang, 2008). Dans ce contexte, des études ont déjà montré le rôle fondamental de l'emploi comme facilitateur d'intégration (Fibbi & Dahinden, 2004;Wehrle et al., 2017), mais les politiques d'intégration en Suisse ne se sont intéressées à cette question que récemment. En outre, l'emploi représente des enjeux multiples (reconfiguration identitaire, amélioration de statut, etc.) et le processus d'intégration est souvent complexe et hors de portée pour une personne réfugiée qui découvre encore la langue et la culture locales. ...
... Ce rôle intégrateur découle à la fois de son aspect instrumental -il offre la légitimité aux réfugié-es de participer à la société qui les accueille -et de son aspect social -il permet l'entrée dans une nouvelle communauté de pratiques et la création de liens sociaux (Fibbi & Dahinden, 2004). L'emploi devient d'autant plus important dans une situation d'exil où l'individu a perdu toutes ses possessions et ressent le besoin de reconstruire sa vie dans le pays d'accueil (Wehrle et al., 2017). Outre la rémunération, le travail offre également un sentiment d'utilité, de fierté et de dignité (Tisato, 2017). ...
... L'emploi permettrait aussi aux bénéficiaires de pouvoir se projeter dans un futur en Suisse : « [un emploi] est important pour les personnes elles-mêmes, donc pour leur permettre d'avancer, de se projeter, puis de pouvoir voir des perspectives » (CE1). Nous comprenons ainsi que l'accès à l'emploi est vu comme un élément favorisant l'intégration tant au niveau économique que social, juridique et personnel (Clot, 2008;Fibbi & Dahinden, 2004;Wehrle et al., 2017). ...
L’intégration professionnelle des réfugié-es est un objectif politique important en Suisse, mais la notion en elle-même est complexe, polysémique et en constante évolution. Bien que la littérature ait démontré le rôle intégrateur de l’emploi dans ce cadre, l’accès à l’emploi reste difficile et des dispositifs d’accompagnement ont été mis en place pour faciliter ce processus. Dès lors, le rôle des professionnel-les de l’intégration consiste à favoriser l’autonomisation des réfugié-es, alors que leur climat de travail est empli de contradictions. Selon une perspective psychosociale, nous questionnons l’évolution de la notion d’intégration pour réfugié-es en Suisse, ainsi que l’impact de ces modifications sur l’activité des professionnel-les de l’intégration. Nos analyses mettent en évidence que les évolutions politiques et législatives récentes ne permettent pas de fournir une définition de l’intégration professionnelle, qui se manifeste principalement en une série d’étapes à franchir. Les professionnel-les ont ainsi pour tâche de délimiter eux/elles-mêmes les contours de leur activité d’intégration. Ils/elles les combinent aux enjeux nombreux de l’accès au marché de l’emploi, ce qui amène à de multiples tensions. De plus, les nouvelles réglementations menacent l’équilibre fragile construit dans la pratique et semblent aller à l’encontre des valeurs défendues par ces professionnel-les.
... 42 What do recent assessments suggest about the condition of assets, opportunity structure and empowerment outcomes in Germany, as they relate to refugees moving forward in rebuilding and shaping their lives? The vocabulary and concepts used to explore these conditions in Germany reveals a variety of terms used, such as self-reliance (Embiricos, 2020), resilience (Dubus, 2017), self-worth (Wehrle, Klehe, Kira, & Zikic, 2018), life satisfaction (Walther, Fuchs, Schupp, & Scheve, 2020), well-being (El Khoury, 2018Scheu, Schmidtke, & Volkert, 2019;Schirovsky, Schmidtke, & Volkert, 2020) and societal participation (Christ;Scheu et al., 2019;Söhn et al., 2017). This labeling is often driven by the domain of focus-for example, whether evaluations are being investigated primarily from economic, political, social or psychological perspectivesbut investigations share a broad goal to understand how refugees can participate in German society such that their lives might converge with those around them, driving mutually beneficial outcomes (Bonin, 2016). ...
... Unfortunately, as the majority of refugees continue to live in shelter facilities and not among other Germans, the development of social and linguistic capital is slowed regardless of legal status, and feelings of differences and slow identity convergence simultaneously persist. Wehrle et al. (2018) also confirm that an enhanced, holistic ability to return to and choose "savoring basic life freedoms" bolsters psychological agency in the form of supporting new identities, driving feelings of independence and rebuilding self-worth, which in turn contributes back to the ability to structure life in ways to savor freedom and choice (p. 10). ...
... Such emphasis can obviously help address the individual and governance problems with long-term welfare dependency (Bonin, 2016;Funk, 2016, p. 292). Even so, simply having any job or earning income, however, cannot account for the more complex manifestations of refugees' growing existential needs such as considering work opportunities to be relevant, finding meaning in daily activities, building self-worth and having broader control over life trajectories (Wehrle et al. 2018). ...
To what extent are refugees empowered in their daily lives to overcome legal, material and sociocultural challenges that governmental institutional structures create? In Germany, where over 1 million individuals have received a form of asylum-related protection since 2015, expansive possibilities for life remaking may be superficially presumed, given Germany’s robust economy and democratic political systems. As such, the purpose of this PhD research is to describe and understand refugees’ capacity for change in daily life in this unique, evolving sociopolitical context. This thesis presents qualitative data from fieldwork conducted in refugee shelters in Cologne—a large, wealthy, progressive city—between 2017 and 2018.
The conceptual approach argues that the possibilities for change are tied primarily to three key areas: 1) the assets and capabilities refugees have (agency); 2) the governmental institutional conditions that define their use (opportunity structure) and 3) the ways these factors interact to enable or constrain choices in building new lives (empowerment). A coding template, constructed deductively from these concepts and inductively from data, is used to analyze legal documents; 48 expert interviews; 28 semi-structured and conversational interviews with refugee families; and 234 pages of field note observations of shelter life. Outcomes are examined at the local level across legal, economic and sociocultural domains of daily living.
Descriptive and thematic analyses reveal that refugee participants’ empowerment for change is constrained in each domain, with respect to qualities of agency and opportunity structure influencing capacity for choice. Agency as assets and capabilities is slowly expanding across domains. Participants increasingly value, strive for and gather agency in terms of understanding complex legal information, pursuing favorable legal statuses, learning German, seeking employment, establishing homes, feeling less isolated, building connections with Germans and sensing psychological peace. Legal frameworks, however, do not necessarily align to allow for its effective building or application. Although they are becoming more progressive in some ways and provide adequate levels of basic material support, access to benefits, services and rights change rapidly, creating great instability in what can be pursued as solutions. Similarly, inflexible and hierarchical governance structures limit clear entry points for participants’ dynamic engagement within. As such, participants encounter difficulties executing choices to reach the goals they value. However, whether choices break down at the level of presence, use or effectiveness varies contextually. Origin country or residency status can eliminate the presence of choice, in terms of imposing explicit legal prohibitions. Sociodemographic assets—such as gender, family status, language skills, education or professional background—threaten the use or effectiveness of choice, as individuals reconcile their former identities within new state-determined possibilities for social participation, as well as doubt the realistic possibilities to reach increasingly existential aspirations towards meaningful employment, stability and belonging.
Possessing connections to engaged civil society or local government actors enhances empowerment possibilities most saliently, as such intermediaries are better positioned to navigate aforementioned agency-structure misalignments. These connections are also critical, given that refugee participants do not view shelters—still their dominant living spaces—as homes or community-based sources of help. At the same time, they nonetheless demonstrate empowerment through prioritizing family values and undertaking familiar means of homemaking, finding ways to combat turbulence with creative constructions of culturally meaningful elements of normalcy.
This PhD research contributes to the evolving understanding of how governmental opportunity structures shape refugees’ broader possibilities for life remaking. Ultimately, while the consolidated analysis does not cast Germany’s refugees more broadly as victims in a state of bare life given legal structures with a humanitarian premise, more stable, multilaterally consistent policy could still limit volatility and enhance possibilities for more empowered life outcomes, as they pursue more sustainable, long-term futures. (Thesis is published with the University of Bonn at: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/9416)
... Second, we provide a synthesis that brings together key factors at the micro, meso and macro levels that are germane to refugees' integration into the workplace. By doing this, we extend the work of scholars that focused on individual-level factors, for example, Wehrle, Klehe, Kira, and Zikic (2018) and answer the call of scholars, that is, Lee, Szkudlarek, Nguyen, and Nardon (2020), who argue that the challenge of refugees' integration requires a multi-level approach, in particular by emphasising the need to incorporate macro-level contextual factors into refugee studies. Finally, the conceptual model makes a theoretical contribution because it places HRM at the heart of the model, which to our knowledge is the first in the context of refugees' integration into the workplace. ...
... We argue that the use of a liminal lens is justified because a significant issue that derails the integration of refugees into the workplace is due to them being; in-between refugee and 'settled' status, and betwixt places. Academic, for example, Wehrle et al. (2018), and grey literature, for example, OECD and UNHCR (2018), demonstrate consilience as extant evidence suggest that these are among the key factors that disrupt refugees' integration. ...
... The integration of refugees into the workforce is a multi-faceted issue that goes beyond a single level of analysis. We extend the work of scholars who mainly focus on the individual-factors of refugees, for example, Wehrle et al. (2018), and answer the call of scholars, for example, Szkudlarek et al. (2019), in underscoring the need to include macro-level contextual factors in refugee studies. By synthesising the micro, meso and macro levels, our second contribution builds on the work of scholars, for example, , by developing a conceptual model that is more rigorously and robustly viable in estimating the success of refugees' integration into workplaces. ...
The integration of refugees into workplaces in their destination country remains a global concern. We meet the challenge of this problem by conceptualising a theoretical model using a liminal lens; more specifically, through the three thematic lenses of liminality as process, liminality as position and liminality as place. By addressing the research question; ‘how does a liminal lens provide new insights into refugees' integration into the workplace?’ we make three contributions to extant literature. First, we offer a dynamic perspective of refugees' integration into the workplace. Second, we provide a synthesis that brings together key factors at the micro, meso and macro levels that are germane to refugees' assimilation into the workplace. Finally, we contribute to human resource (HR) literature by showing a more nuanced view of the role of human resource management, specifically how an ambidextrous HR architecture can help firms explore refugees as a talent pool, while exploiting existing talents.
... Focusing on refugees in studying the relationship between organizational inclusion and workers' identity regulation is fruitful because power plays an important role in this relationship (Priola et al., 2018;Tyler, 2019), and the refugee setting is associated with especially unequal power relations. In addition, while the refugees' lives are in fundamental transition, so are their identities (Flum and Cinamon, 2011;Wehrle et al., 2018). Thus, this setting enables studying the inclusionidentity link as if under a magnifying glass. ...
... Such experiences are especially significant, because flight is associated with substantial loss of identity -who the individual was before and what life was like -and embracing a refugee identity (Abkhezr et al., 2018;Lacroix, 2004). As an important element of the resettling process, searching employment triggers refugees' identity work, whereby refugees seek to cope with status loss (Hunt, 2008;Jackson and Bauder, 2013;Pietka-Nykaza, 2015;Tomlinson, 2010;Vandevoordt and Verschraegen, 2019;Wehrle et al., 2018). ...
... Likewise, the supermarket chain adopted a programme targeted at refugees that comprised special recruitment activities and so-called 'integration days' where refugees learn about the supermarket's product range as well as eating habits and Christian holidays in Austria -and 'how to talk with women in Austria; what it means to have a romantic relationship' (Zoran). While this programme is aimed at inclusion, at the same time it is a forceful tool of identity regulation in the form of directly defining individuals (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 629) as it connects the refugee label to an important socio-material practice (Lacroix, 2004;Wehrle et al., 2018) and enables them to become 'good refugees'. ...
Do inclusive organizations live up to the term ‘inclusion’? Diversity literature depicts the inclusive organization as an ideal entity that welcomes social minorities who, in turn, feel valued and unique and have a sense of belonging to the organization. Our study offers a critical account of inclusion concepts and practice. We argue that proponents of inclusion overlook that inclusive organizations also may regulate workers’ identities. To examine the relationship between organizational inclusion and identity regulation we conceptualise inclusion as a process involving various organizational actors and practices. Drawing on a multiple-case study of refugees working in Austria we show how organizational practices aimed at inclusion contribute to the forming of refugees as ‘good’, ‘glorious’ and ‘grateful’ subjects. This identity regulation is ambivalent: while it allows refugees to work in inclusive organizations, it also constrains their sense of self.
... The four career adaptability dimensions the (4Cs) consist of are as follows: (1) concern (are you concerned about your career?), as the key motivator for people to consider a future and plan their careers; (2) control (do you feel you have control of your career situation?), which asks individuals if they are decisive and assertive in their intentions to make career decisions (Wehrle et al., 2018); (3) curiosity (are you curious about the options available to you?), which requires the individual to take control and foster career exploration (however, this exploration may be constrained by different contextual factors [Hynes, 2011;Wehrle et al., 2018)]); and (4) confidence (do you have the confidence to move forward?), which asks whether the individual "can do it" as they confront obstacles and engage in problem-solving. ...
... The four career adaptability dimensions the (4Cs) consist of are as follows: (1) concern (are you concerned about your career?), as the key motivator for people to consider a future and plan their careers; (2) control (do you feel you have control of your career situation?), which asks individuals if they are decisive and assertive in their intentions to make career decisions (Wehrle et al., 2018); (3) curiosity (are you curious about the options available to you?), which requires the individual to take control and foster career exploration (however, this exploration may be constrained by different contextual factors [Hynes, 2011;Wehrle et al., 2018)]); and (4) confidence (do you have the confidence to move forward?), which asks whether the individual "can do it" as they confront obstacles and engage in problem-solving. ...
... In Australia, despite the increased understanding of the importance of context in the delivery of effective careers guidance, access to career guidance support and practice frameworks that reflect the refugee and asylum seeker context are at best inadequate (Fleay et al., 2016). Further criticism of career theories is that they may not take into account the reality that not everyone makes career decisions solely based on their work experience, education, future desires or ability (Bimrose and McNair, 2011;Wehrle et al., 2018). The issue of how society can pave the way for the positive resettlement of refugees and asylum seekers, and provide a structure through career guidance by which people can re-establish their livelihood and secure meaningful employment, is an ongoing debate in career guidance for social justice (Hooley et al., 2018;Newman et al., 2018;Codell et al., 2011). ...
This study examines how people from refugee and asylum‐seeking backgrounds draw on their social capital to develop their career adaptability. To examine this issue, we drew on interview data from twenty‐five people based in Melbourne, Australia, who have sought asylum between 2008 and 2016. The present study examines the influence of different dimensions of social capital on individuals’ career adaptability. Findings revealed that a more nuanced understanding of linking, bridging and bonding social capital is needed when exploring the career adaptability resources of refugees and people seeking asylum. In particular, important differences were identified between engaging with a social network and trusting a social network.
... In most cases, highly-skilled refugees struggle to fulfill their career potential in the receiving country (Bloch, 2002;Junankar and Mahuteau, 2005;Krahn et al., 2000;Lundborg, 2013;Mahuteau and Junankar, 2008;Wilkinson and Garcea, 2017). The emerging body of research on refugee work integration (Baranik et al., 2018;Campion, 2018;Eggenhofer-Rehart et al., 2018;Lee et al., 2020;Newman et al., 2018;Szkudlarek et al., in press;Wehrle et al., 2018Wehrle et al., , 2019 recognizes the critical contextual barriers facing refugees and the impact of these barriers on refugees' careers and professional identities. Although considerable research from diverse fields has shown that NSOs are a crucial source of support for refugees, research on the dynamic processes involved in refugee employment support is in its infancy (Baran et al., 2018). ...
... This process is fraught with identity threats, which are challenges to one's preferred identity narrative (Brown and Coupland, 2015). These challenges arise from a lack of recognition of refugees' credentials and experience, as well as suggestions that their expectations of returning to their original career may be unrealistic (Wehrle et al., 2018). ...
... The process of identity work for refugees entails revising constructions of who they are in ways that bring a sense of coherence and distinctiveness (Brown, 2015). Wehrle et al. (2018) found that refugees coped with identity threats by engaging in identity-protection responses (such as derogating threat sources, positively reframing present vocational identity, rejecting stigmatizing identity, and seeking better relationships with people posing threats) and identity-restructuring responses (such as reducing the importance of the threatened identity, defining oneself anew, and changing the meaning of their identity). Mozetič (2018) explored the narratives of highly skilled refugees in the medical profession, settling in Sweden, to understand the interactions between their refugee and professional identities. ...
How does professional employment support provided by newcomer support organizations (NSOs) influence highly-skilled refugees’ professional identities and workforce integration? To answer this question, we draw on interviews with 25 managers and staff of NSOs in Canada and 11 recently arrived, highly-skilled refugees. We contribute to the literature on refugee workforce integration by shedding light on the dynamic process of employment support in which NSOs engage in sensegiving practices and influence refugees’ understanding of career options, assessment of opportunities, and their professional identity responses. We found that NSOs attempted to manage refugees’ expectations of career opportunities while fostering hope for the future and that refugees reacted to NSOs’ sensegiving practices by resisting expectation management messages, recrafting a new identity, or bracketing the present as transitory. We highlight the role of external agents in sensemaking and identity work by exploring work role transitions caused by forced migration. Furthermore, we uncover the dynamics of power and contextual constraints that influence sensegiving interactions. From a practical point of view, we argue that in the absence of quality employment opportunities, the reliance on refugees’ resilience and their motivation for long-term professional integration may further marginalize them.
... For people with migration backgrounds, a stable and secure career pathway is linked with physical and psychological well-being, as well as cohesion in societies (Magnano et al., 2021;Swanson, 2012). Similarly, the career development of people with migration and refugee backgrounds is strongly linked to their integration and well-being (Abkhezr et al., 2015;Wehrle et al., 2018). Across many countries, a group that has been recognised repeatedly as vulnerable is those with migration backgrounds who have recently transitioned into global north countries from the global south countries (Biagi et al., 2018). ...
... Future cohorts of southern migrants could be at an even greater risk of having to experience lack of access to decent work, and consequently make app-based gig work engagements inevitable. In addition, migration programs often focus more on attracting younger migrants, yet their future employment prospects could be threatened if a healthy and sustainable sense of career identity is not established (Wehrle et al., 2018). Hasty career and employment related decisions with lifetime implications, fuelled by the "traditional capitalist narrative" of working hard and achieving a dream (Peticca-Harris et al., 2020, p. 36), might further stretch the gap between migrants' sustainable career development and their access to decent work. ...
The incidence of app-based gig work is expanding rapidly in developed global north countries. Many app-based gig workers are migrants from developing global south countries searching for a better life in their resettlement countries. App-based gig work, however, is insecure, irregular and potentially precarious. Access to decent work is vital for migrants’ integration after resettlement and also their career development. In the context of the decent work agenda, this article explores the intersections of migration, app-based gig work, and southern migrants’ career development in the global north and considers the implications for career practice and research.
... Echoing a similar sentiment, UNESCO's Global Monitoring Report (2019) emphasises skills development and VET to advance refugees' employment opportunities and economic inclusion. Despite the policy attention on VET for refugees, several complexities persist in the implementation and success of such programmes globally, such as the right to employment, language barriers, and recognition of prior academic and vocational qualifications (Chadderton and Edmonds 2015;Hannah 2008;Wehrle et al. 2018). ...
... Hilal (2012) reported the limitations of skills training in reducing marginalisation and poverty and enhancing well-being in the Palestinian context. The research has recorded numerous challenges faced by refugees, such as restrictions on study hours and the right to work (Chadderton and Edmonds 2015), discrimination and exploitation in the job market (Knappert, Kornau, and Figengül 2018), the language of the host country (Hannah 2008), lack of recognition of their previous knowledge and credentials (Wehrle et al. 2018), limited work domains (Bloch 2002), and contextual impediments related to the social, political, and economic environments of the host countries (Hilal 2012;Thorne 2020). Some studies (Aerne and Bonoli 2021;Jorgensen, Hautz and Li 2012), mainly from Europe, that reported the successful integration of refugees in VET systems emphasised the importance of governmental support structures in such successes. ...
Contrary to common assumptions, the vast majority of the world’s refugees reside in neighbouring countries in the Global South. This paper explores the complex interaction of global vocational education policies with the local realities of five communities within the under-researched yet highly relevant refugee context of India, across three major cities. It examines whether the stated policy purpose of VET addresses the practical requirements and aspirations of refugees. Drawing on interviews, focus groups, and participatory drawing with 66 respondents from Afghan, Rohingya, Somali, Chin, and Tibetan communities, and staff members from refugee organisations, this paper argues for a move away from the unidimensional goal of economic self-reliance for refugees. By bridging the capabilities approach with intersectionality, the paper calls attention to, and draws policy suggestions for, increment and diversification of VET opportunities to address multiple facets of refugees’ lives, and their inclusion in national VET institutions.
... Migration and flight, in particular, represent life disjunctures that bring substantial changes, including the transformation of one's sense of self. Fleeing one's home country often entails not only the loss of a homeland, family and friends, familiar lives and jobs, but also a sense of who one is and where one belongs in the social fabric (Wehrle et al., 2018). Highly educated refugees experience losses of both social and occupational status (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2006). ...
... The refugee categorisation, however, did not merely discredit interviewees' existing identifications, but also imposed new, pejorative ones upon them (Wehrle et al., 2018). The perceived refugee categorisation brought with it, according to many, the disparaging label of refugees as "stupid" and "lazy" individuals who "don't want to learn" and require merely basic life provisions such as security and financial support. ...
Research often focuses on individual-level factors shaping refugee labour market participation. Less research has been conducted on the implications of the roles of employers, integration programmes, migrant support organisations and similar. This article contributes to the literature by seeking to understand highly educated refugees’ perceptions of how civic integration programmes shape opportunity structures for their labour market participation. It is particularly concerned with how the programmes’ characteristics of malleability and comprehensiveness inform integration processes. Accordingly, the article analyses identification contestations that transpire within civic integration programmes, as perceived by the participants, and compares how these unfold in three different contexts. A total of 41 semi-structured interviews with highly educated refugees in Oslo, Malmö, and Munich were analysed. The findings suggest that the civic integration programmes were thought to either foster or hinder the participants’ employment pathways depending on whether the participants were perceived as highly educated individuals or reduced to the general category of ‘refugee’. The differences were traced back to each civic integration programme’s capacity to provide malleable integration support, calling attention to the importance of the programmes’ acknowledgment of refugees’ heterogeneous needs and the pitfalls associated with undifferentiated refugee categorisation.
... For example, in a study of older professionals and managers, being laid off was experienced as a traumatic event that drove people into less skilled, lower status roles and caused a fragmentation of identity (Gabriel et al., 2013). Studies have also identified ways in which forced career transition as a result of job loss, illness, or involuntary migration threatens individuals' identities and self-worth, and challenges important workrelated and other meanings (Kira & Klehe, 2016;Rimmon-Kenan, 2002;Wehrle et al., 2018). This research also shows, however, that most people do not suffer such challenges passively. ...
... This research was inspired by the literature on forced transitions and specifically how such transitions disrupt and are integrated into individuals' self-narratives (Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010;Wehrle et al., 2018). Research in this tradition has shown how a forced career transition can challenge important meanings that individuals have made of their lives (Kanji & Cahusac, 2015;Kira & Klehe, 2016), and how people respond by working to construct new meanings (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016;Zikic & Richardson, 2007). ...
Narrative approaches to the self suggest that forced career transitions disrupt individuals’ self-narratives and motivate their efforts to re-establish narrative coherence. To craft and rework their self-narratives, people draw on a range of relational resources, including relationships with family, friends, and other important people in their lives. In this paper, I explore the link, within individuals’ self-narratives, between people’s working lives following a forced career transition and their early parental relationships. I investigate this through a longitudinal narrative study of 21 professional dancers forced to change career after an injury, drawing on three waves of interviews over an eight-year period. I identify three types of self-narrative – Immersed-Striving, Oppositional-Seeking, and Supportive-Settling – that link a kind of early parental relationship to a kind of post-injury relationship to work. In each of these narratives, dance acts as a transitional object with a specific relational meaning – connection, agency, or direction – that was enacted in participants’ early relationships, and that they sought to re-establish through their post-injury working lives.
... The direct trauma memories produced by the Malaysian cohort were more self-defining than those of the Bangladeshi cohort. Forceful migration and repeated exposure to traumatic incidents threaten an individual's personal and social identity (Wehrle et al., 2018). The reports of direct trauma memories to be less self-defining among the Bangladeshi cohort might be due to their threatened identity as they were evicted in recent months. ...
... According to Petriglieri (2011), refugee people try to either protect or restructure their previous identities when they are under threat. They try to maintain a good relationship with local agencies by modifying the threat into resources and protect or restructure their original identity (Kreiner & Sheep, 2009;Wehrle et al., 2018). In this study, the frequent recollections of direct trauma memories and reporting those more self-defining might indicate the gradually restructured and stable refugee identity of Rohingyas in Malaysia. ...
Literature indicates that trauma exposure leads to autobiographical memory (AM) impairment, but the differential effects of direct and indirect trauma on memory remain unclear. We investigated AMs of 100 Rohingya refugees (Meanage = 35.79; SDage = 15.36) recruited from camps in Bangladesh and communities in Malaysia. Each participant retrieved ten memories to word cues and rated to what extent those memories were self-defining on a 5-point scale. They also completed the PTSD-8 scale and a trauma checklist reporting the types of traumatic events they experienced. Results showed that participants with frequent exposure to direct and indirect trauma recalled more traumatic memories. Surprisingly, more direct-trauma memories appeared to be specific than indirect trauma and non-trauma memories. As expected, individuals who scored higher on the PTSD-8 scale recalled more non-specific AMs. Rohingyas in Bangladesh who migrated months before data collection, thus retaining recent trauma experiences , retrieved more non-specific memories than those in Malaysia who migrated years ago. The direct trauma memories of the Malaysian cohort were more self-defining than their counterparts. The participant's ability to recall more direct trauma memories with specificity could be attributed to the repeated recall of those memories to the relevant authorities of the host countries to justify their refugee status.
... Many previous studies focused on refugees living in various countries, such as Austria, Germany, Turkey, United States, Greece, or the Netherlands (Baranik et al., 2018;Eggenhofer-Rehart et al., 2018;Gericke et al., 2018;Knappert et al., 2018;Pajic et al., 2018;Wehrle et al., 2018). Such studies not only identified obstacles such as hostile labor markets, social rejection, exploitation legitimation, or long-term unemployment but also suggested coping mechanisms, such as social capital, psychological capital, reflection-relaxation, or problem-solving, that accordingly hinder or assist refugees in navigating their careers and overcoming the associated work-related challenges. ...
... First, addressing the calls for future research on refugees (e.g., Newman et al., 2018), the study empirically tests (combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies) a conceptual model of how refugees search for and secure employment. Although the vast majority of studies on refugees address their integration into a host country labor market from a person-centric approach (Wehrle et al., 2018), the current study intends to integrate contextual factors into the understanding of the career adaptability of refugees and focuses on personal narratives at the same time. Second, the study expands the model of Campion (2018) by testing the role of cultural identification with the host country. ...
This study aims to test the theoretical model of career adaptability of refugees to investigate the dynamics of successful resettlement. The theoretical model is grounded on career construction and social network theory. We employ quantitative and qualitative methodologies to test the model in a sample of Venezuelans living and working in Colombia. The quantitative results provide partial support for Campion's model. However, we test an alternative model and find that career adaptability has a direct relationship with subjective resettlement (i.e., life satisfaction and psychological health). In addition, cultural identification plays a buffering role on the harmful effects of discrimination on subjective resettlement. Qualitative results from eight in-depth interviews shed light on the process of refugee resettlement, thus revealing the role of social networks. Our study contributes to previous research on refugees by testing, adapting, and expanding a novel model of work resettlement and focusing on a group of refugees transitioning from one emerging country to another emerging country.
... The increasing number of people escaping persecution, terror, and war in their home countries has forced millions of refugees to seek shelter and freedom in new host countries including developed economies as USA, Australia, and West European countries, as well as emerging (and developing) countries such as the Middle East and North African countries (Wehrle et al., 2018). In this study, we define a refugee as a person '…owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country' (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees-UNHCR, 2017). ...
... Because there is "a dizzying number of potential motives guiding identity construction" (Ashforth & Schinoff, 2016, p. 116), our study focuses on a selection of core cultural needs or practices relating to the social identity establishment of Syrian refugees in Jordan. Specifically, because being a 'refugee' includes not only a story of loss, but also several difficulties of facing undesirable definitions imposed on oneself such as, foreigner and untrustworthy (Wehrle et al., 2018). The present study is directed towards understanding how Syrian refugees define themselves in Jordan. ...
This study seeks to understand the cultural inclusion/exclusion practices that Syrian refugees encounter in the Jordanian work environment, explore whether an ingroup (Jordanian) over outgroup (Syrian refugees) favouritism exists and how such favouritism reshapes Syrian refugees’ social identity in this new environment. Drawing on qualitative-semi structured interviews with 12 Syrian refugees in Jordan, the study highlights different multi-layered cultural exclusion/inclusion practices that Syrian refugees in Jordan face. Through a combined underpinning of social identity theory (SIT) (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and the acculturation framework (Arends-Tóth & van de Vijver, 2006), the study reports how these practices re-shape Syrian refugees’ identity around vocational skills. We go beyond the basic types of discrimination against refugees (e.g., gender, race, religion) to highlight economic and legal restrictions as important promoters of cultural exclusion despite the strong cultural cohesion factors. This highlights the significant role of community and societal practices that can go beyond cultural differences between groups, and extend our understanding of SIT.
... There is no study to our knowledge that explicitly investigated the relationship between vocational threats and self-perceptions in relation to unemployed people. However, studies among unemployed people show that they do experience identity threats and loss of self-worth, as their situation is not in line with their ideal self (Giuntoli, Hughes, Karban, & South, 2015;Wehrle, Klehe, Kira, & Zikic, 2018). It is likely that the threat of unemployment, will stir that unwanted feared future self. ...
... This could be attempted by creating appreciative social contexts in the form of social support exclusively available for job insecure people, for example, that allow people to frame experiences of job insecurity not only in terms of loss and unemployment (see Selenko, 2019 for specific policy suggestions). Also, it might be worthwhile to make alternative sources of work-related identities more salient (e.g., volunteering, Selenko, Stiglbauer, & Batinic, 2020;Wehrle et al., 2018). Certainly, there are a few limitations to this study. ...
This study tests the assumption that job insecurity threatens people’s work‐related identities and thereby affects their political attitudes. Work‐related identity threat in times of job insecurity is proposed to happen in two ways: people will fear to lose an important part of their identity (their identity as employed people), and they also be afraid to gain a negative identity (their feared future self of becoming unemployed). Both identity threats are proposed to lead to more antiegalitarian attitudes and more political leaning to the right. A four‐wave study among 969 employed British employees delivers support for some of the assumptions. In line with the expectations, results of time‐stable structural equation modeling show that job insecurity indeed threatens the identity as an employed person, which leads to an increase in antiegalitarian attitudes over time. Different than expected, identity threat in the form of a heightened identification with the unemployed was not found. Also, people who identified more as unemployed people actually reported fewer antiegalitarian attitudes and shifted their political standing more to the left.
... However, an impediment for many refugees is that their qualifications are not, or only partly, recognized in the host country (Eggenhofer-Rehart et al., 2018;Wehrle, Klehe, Kira, & Zikic, 2018), and they are requested to do additional occupational training. Austria and Germany have a long-standing vocational education and training system with more than 300 occupations that require two to three years of on-the-job training and vocational school. ...
... Similarly, Scott and Wahl (2011) and Taylor (2001) contend that the societal marginalization of refugees has a strong psychological impact on their wellbeing. In addition, refugees often must contend with deep humiliation, stigmatism, and ethnic discrimination, which undermines self-worth and their ability to participate in society (Esses et al., 2013;Wehrle et al., 2018). ...
Displaced people from Afghanistan comprise the largest protracted refugee population in Asia and the second-largest refugee population in the world. For nearly 40 years, most Afghan refugees have been received in neighboring Iran and Pakistan. In Iran, they have been provided with such provisions as healthcare, education, housing, employment, food, visas, and continuing residence. However, many Afghan refugees face significant barriers in accessing services, particularly when it comes to undocumented persons. This study identifies the factors affecting homelessness among refugees, drawing on interviews with eight Afghan men. We explore a four key elements (4Es) construct for supporting the empowerment of refugee people in Iran through education, employment, economic, and emotional support. The study argues that the 4Es approach can alleviate homelessness among refugees.
... The third is providing asylum/visa lottery to individuals who are facing persecution in their home country but have the capacity to contribute meaningfully to the economy of the country they are joining. The capacity, here, may differ in terms of expertise, potential and economic tendencies (Van Riemsdijk et al., 2016;Wehrle et al., 2018). ...
The world is a global village today undoubtedly due to advances in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and their education. The knowledge from these disciplines influences various aspects of human daily affairs, career choices and the type of education acquired by citizens. STEM literature across the world has put Africa at the tail end of development. Africa’s underdevelopment may not be argued owing to empirical literature in the direction of poor development. However, the global demand for competence in STEM disciplines continues to rise at a rate developed countries find difficult to keep up due to shortage of man power as against demands. This surge in demand creates a gap that must be filled in pursuit of sustainable growth. Science, technology, robotics, engineering, the arts and mathematics (STREAM) education remains obscure among countries in Africa, with the paradigm shift to aesthetics with arts and automation in robotics globally calling for redirection in developing regions. South African and Nigerian curricula have been moderated to accommodate coding and robotics as well as physics in technology, with green energy and elementary automation, respectively. This manuscript explores education as the panacea for poverty alleviation, sustainable growth and equality among citizens. The current state of affairs of STREAM education in Africa and its potential for a youthful and useful population are also explored.
... Participant identities were continually informed and influenced by historical, social, and cultural context as they navigated a war, displacement, and resettlement. This finding aligned with two prior studies indicating the influence of context on the identity of refugees, particularly in host countries (Hatoss, 2012;Wehrle et al., 2018). Similarly, participants found their identities challenged as they resettled in the United States. ...
... Families and migrant networks are often regarded as barriers to education in the current public discourse. However, they also support young refugees in their educational trajectory, as shown by empirical findings (Shapiro, 2019;Wehrle et al., 2018). ...
Germany has become the most important destination country for young refugees in Europe (Destatis, 2021). Vocational education and training can make an important contribution to overcome educational barriers and gain participation in society (Will & Hohmut, 2020). Since 2015, rural regions have faced new challenges in establishing effective support systems for young apprentices with forced migration experience (Ohliger et al., 2017). The participatory LaeneAs research project seeks to identify educational barriers and to promote successful educational pathways for young refugees in vocational training. In four distinct rural areas in Germany, stakeholders in formal, non-formal, and informal learning environments and young refugees will be brought together in real-world laboratories. The authors aim to open space for a co-constructive knowledge production process between scientific and political stakeholders, educational practitioners, and refugee youth. Real-world laboratories are a socio-spatial methodology that combines research and a sustainable capacity building process. The lifeworld expertise will be used for a contextual condition analysis of structural, societal, and individual barriers to education as well as for practice transfer. Building on the discussion of the current state of research and the identification of significant gaps in the practice and research landscape, this essay will focus on the critical discussion of the methodological implementation of the study.
... Where language barriers, racism, and the unstable legal status of the individual and the family (Brunner et al., 2014;Mestheneos & Ioannidi, 2002;Wehrle et al., 2018) coincide with economic challenges such as poor qualification of entrepreneurs, lack of recognition of refugee qualifications, and difficulty in licensing business. ...
This research seeks to explore the influence of Entrepreneurship Support Programs (ESPs) on refugee entrepreneurs, by studying the effects of these programs on the ability of refugee entrepreneurs to address the major challenges facing them in creating and running their ventures. The case of Syrian refugee entrepreneurs in Turkey has been examined. To discover this rarely reported issue in the literature, the qualitative method was adopted. Based on ten semi-structured interviews with Syrian refugee entrepreneurs and two with experts and supervisors in the organizations that deliver ESPs, we identified the main groups of challenges that affect the growth of refugees' businesses, the aspects on which programs have a positive impact related to these challenges, and the shortcomings and areas that these programs fail to help entrepreneurs to meet. The results of this research demonstrate the importance and vital value of ESPs for refugee entrepreneurs, particularly in motivating them for entrepreneurial behavior, and developing the business model for their ventures. Additionally, these support programs raise participants' awareness about the necessity of integrating with the culture, language, laws, and entrepreneurial environment of the host country, and offer some small grants for a limited number of refugees. However, the impact of ESPs is bounded and weak in responding to the fundamental obstacles that affect the business of refugee entrepreneurs and their integration and success in the local market. The results also point out the critical role of the personal attitudes of entrepreneurs towards the programs in which they are involved. The research lists the crucial weaknesses and deficiencies of the existing ESPs, in addition to recommendations for overcoming them in a framework tied to the identified challenges. This forms a substantial benefit in developing ESPs and improving interventions that help refugee entrepreneurs meet the challenges they face in establishing and managing their startups. In order to generalize the results of this qualitative study which has been conducted with a small sample, and to discover detailed aspects of refugee entrepreneurship, there is a need for more quantitative and qualitative research to address specific dimensions of ESPs and their effect.
... italsorten von Pierre Bourdieu . Sie zeigen u . a ., dass Um-und Abwertungsprozesse im Aufnahmeland gerade die kapitalreicheren Personen besonders betreffen können (ebd .: 41) . Andere Ansätze legen offen, dass es aus Sicht der Geflüchteten nicht nur um einen Job, sondern auch um Lebensentwürfe geht -mit allen Folgen, die das mit sich bringt . Wie Wehrle et al . (2018) ausführen, sind Geflüchtete während des Integrationsprozesses sowohl Bedrohungen ihrer im Herkunftsland erworbenen beruflichen Identitäten ("identity threats", z . B . durch Abwertung von Berufserfahrung) ausgesetzt, als auch Bedrohungen durch im Zielland übergestülpte Identitäten ("threatening identities", z . B . als fremd und bedrohl ...
Wo stehen Geflüchtete fünf Jahre nach der Einreise hinsichtlich ihrer Arbeitsmarktintegration? Der vorliegende Beitrag nähert sich dieser Fragestellung aus einer biografischen und prozessorientierten Längsschnittperspektive. Die Geflüchteten sehen sich der denkbar großen Aufgabe gegenüber, in einer herausfordernden Lebensphase und ausgestattet mit knappen Ressourcen einen Platz in einem gänzlich unbekannten Umfeld zu finden. Auf Basis von zwei narrativ-biografischen Befragungswellen mit Geflüchteten aus Syrien wird gezeigt, dass sich bei diesen Suchprozessen vier typische Verlaufsmuster der Arbeitsmarktintegration herausbilden, die auf die Fluchtpunkte Exklusion, erwerbsbezogene Marginalisierung, Re-Normalisierung und Chancenorientierung zulaufen. Wir beleuchten Bedingungskonstellationen und Dynamiken, die den Arbeitsmarktintegrationsverläufen unterliegen und ihnen Dauerhaftigkeit verleihen. Refugees’ Labour Market Trajectories in Germany – A Typology of Conditions and Dynamics Where do refugees stand with regard to their labor market integration five years after immigration? This article addresses this question from a biographical and process-oriented longitudinal perspective. In a turbulent life phase, refugees confront the challenging task of finding their economic positioning in a new environment. Based on two waves of narrative-biographical Interviews with Syrian refugees, we identify four typical trajectories of labor market integration: exclusion, employment-related marginalization, re-normalization, and a focus on opportunity. The article highlights factors and dynamics that underlie and perpetuate these integration trajectories.
... Our findings show how difficult it can be for refugee newcomers to figure out what they should learn and to become aware of informal rules. This problem is also well-known in the context of job search and implicit knowledge about labour markets (Eggenhofer-Rehart et al., 2018;Wehrle et al., 2018). Furthermore, prior research has revealed that refugees tend to view their future positively and that their expectations concerning their vocational career are unrealistic (Baran et al., 2018). ...
Labour market integration of refugees is a challenge to which employers can make a major contribution. This study examines how organisational socialisation practices tailored to the needs of refugees shape the refugees' socialisation and development. We draw on a longitudinal case study focused on refugees doing apprenticeships in a supermarket chain in Austria. We show how a set of organisational practices benefit the refugees. However, these practices, along with other factors inside and outside the workplace, also complicate the refugees' progress because they create tensions related to time. We identify three temporal tensions and propose the concept of ‘polyrhythmic socialisation’ to theorise about the specific shape of these tensions, their causes and consequences. We formulate recommendations for practitioners and avenues for future research.
... Furthermore, it may be harder for certain populations to communicate their experiences than for others. For example, if we were to study the lived experiences of refugees from war-torn countries, we need to account for potential language barriers as well as the potential existence of traumatic experiences which make answering standard survey questions particularly difficult (e.g., Wehrle et al., 2018). The personal connection with the individual and the adaptation of the research methods to the individual's situation and needs that are emphasized in inductive qualitative approaches can help to ensure comprehension of questions and are particularly important when researching topics that might be highly complex and require a high degree of empathy (e.g., Dickson-Swift et al., 2007). ...
Qualitative research methods are a powerful set of tools that play an important role in the scientific knowledge generation cycle. Yet the role of qualitative research in knowledge generation in the WOP field is unclear. The aim of this position paper is to showcase the value of qualitative research methods for the progress of WOP research. We offer an empirical overview and evaluation of observed practices and explore methodological challenges that appear to be prevalent. Furthermore, we discuss future opportunities for harnessing the hitherto untapped potential of qualitative methods for exploring pertinent and timely WOP research questions. Throughout this paper, we wish to encourage thoughtful discussion of how qualitative methods can be used to constructively contribute to scientific knowledge generation in the WOP field.
... Our ndings on the relationships between identity formation in relation to work for refugees in different countries are not unusual (43)(44)(45)(46)(47)(48). Wehrle et al describe how multiple integration barriers in relation to work and society can also threaten refugees' fundamental identity needs for worth, distinctiveness, continuity, and control (49). These complex matrices of in uences of identity as they relate to work agree with our ndings, along with the call for stronger support mechanisms to facilitate employment opportunities and reduce postmigration stress, particularly in the early years of arriving (50). ...
Background:
The majority of the current South Sudanese population in Australia arrived as refugees in the early 2000s, facing challenges related to dislocation, navigating a new culture while honouring their own own. Much of the research on the South Sudanese experience has been conducted in the early years after arrival, with resettlement stressors likely to influence narratives of identity as new immigrants.
This study aimed to understand the lived experiences of identity among South Sudanese who are long-term residents of Australia after fleeing their birth country, migration, and re-building their lives.
Methods:
The qualitative study was underpinned by a phenomenological framework that characterised the experiences of study participants. Purposive and snowball sampling was used to recruit Sydney-residing adults who arrived in Australia through its humanitarian refugee program 10 or more years ago and were born in South Sudan. Semi-structured interviews explored how participants identified themselves in Australia, changes in their experiences over time, their social and general life situation in Australia, and perceptions (self and other) of South Sudanese people in Australia.
Results:
The 26 participants from refugee backgrounds all had similar experiences of dislocation, most arriving in Australia 10-19 years ago with family members. Most participants were in employment and had attained (sometimes multiple) educational qualifications.
Participants described a multiplicity of interconnected domains that governed the negotiating and making sense of identity. Three key themes were identified: mutable identities - dependent on context; Identity in relation to children; and the influence of limited opportunities. These themes were mediated by other interwoven personal and structural factors that shaped experience and perception. Expressions of hope, pride and achievement were threaded through several of the interviews, particularly in relation to their children. There was also frustration related to employment challenges and discrimination that limited identity reconstruction.
Conclusions:
Our exploration of long-term lived experiences for South Sudanese migrants highlights the evolving and often conflicting factors that shape domains of integration and identity construction.
The deeper, more nuanced understandings of bicultural identity within a strengths-based framework calls for better partnerships and services to support strengthened community and acculturalisation.
... these refugees showed commitment to a broader notion of compassion and solidarity. interestingly unlike past studies that focused on resilience as an inherent capacity, the authors found that persistent adversity enabled refugees to build resilience through entrepreneurial actions. in a qualitative study focusing on refugees in germany, a study found that despite austere hardships, identity threats, and hurdles to integrate in the society, many refugees showed adaptive skills, engaged in functional coping strategies to realize personal meaning and positive psychological growth (wehrle, Klehe, Kira, & Zikic, 2018). as such, while organizations and hrM practices can enable the outcomes of purpose in life and personal growth, the entrepreneurial path is also likely to facilitate this outcome through p-V fit, with the help of interventions from ngos and small business development. ...
Multidimensional fit (MDF) has been coined as "elusive" and relevant to an individ-ual's social identity and self-concept, unfolding over time as individuals assess their fit relative to Person-Organization, Person-Vocation, Person-Job, and Person-Team Fit. In this chapter, the literature as it relates to the refugee employment journey, MDF, and HRM practices that facilitate or inhibit MDF is reviewed. Furthermore, in this study, the process-oriented view of the refuge path highlights the complexity of their experience, noting an array of antecedents as they relate to country, host country and individual differences, interventions through NGOs, refugee resettlement agencies, and organizations, as well as the less explored entrepreneurial path. These diverse paths and the process of finding fit, and the obstacles refugees face, are viewed through the lens of shocks and reassessment of MDF throughout their journey. Finally, the study's outcomes illustrate individual wellbeing factors, organizational level benefits, as well as community level benefits to MDF.
... In order to investigate how to address the grand challenge of refugee workforce integration, we need a comprehensive understanding of the types of support refugees require, how this support can be provided and by whom (Wehrle et al., 2018). Prior literature suggests that in finding sustainable and meaningful employment, refugees rely on NPOs as the first point of contact for various forms of support, including language training, jobsearch aid, computer literacy, cross-cultural education and job referrals (Garkisch et al., 2017;Groutsis et al., 2015). ...
Recent research suggests that human resource management (HRM) can play a crucial role in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and in addressing grand challenges, such as refugee workforce integration. This paper investigates how employers carry out their CSR goals through HRM practices, while working closely with non-profit organizations (NPOs) that facilitate refugee employment support programs. Using qualitative semi-structured interviews with employers and NPOs in Australia, we highlight their co-dependent relationship in addressing the challenge of refugee workforce integration. We demonstrate how, in this co-dependent relationship, the achievement of both CSR goals and social impact is enhanced through each stakeholder’s unique expertise and access to resources. Our research findings advance the current understanding of the HRM–CSR literature on external stakeholder engagement by suggesting that a co-dependent, rather than just a collaborative, relationship can underpin the effective execution of HRM practices with CSR goals.
... Since many refugees experienced adversity and trauma in their home countries from wars and the accompanying destruction, death, and injury (Shepherd et al., 2019), these entrepreneurs often enter an opportunityproduction process with cognitive abilities impaired by shock and trauma and social networks fractured by the discontinuity of relocations. For example, empirical evidence shows that such sudden disruption generates life conditions for refugees that alter their identities (Wehrle, Klehe, Kira, and Zikic, 2017), personalities (Obschonka and Hahn, 2018), psychological capital (Newman, Nielsen, Smyth, Hirst, and Kennedy, 2018), and social capital (Gericke, Burmeister, Löwe, Deller, and Pundt, 2018), all of which affect their career development trajectories. ...
... Since many refugees experienced adversity and trauma in their home countries from wars and the accompanying destruction, death, and injury (Shepherd et al., 2019), these entrepreneurs often enter an opportunityproduction process with cognitive abilities impaired by shock and trauma and social networks fractured by the discontinuity of relocations. For example, empirical evidence shows that such sudden disruption generates life conditions for refugees that alter their identities (Wehrle, Klehe, Kira, and Zikic, 2017), personalities (Obschonka and Hahn, 2018), psychological capital (Newman, Nielsen, Smyth, Hirst, and Kennedy, 2018), and social capital (Gericke, Burmeister, Löwe, Deller, and Pundt, 2018), all of which affect their career development trajectories. ...
We observe the opportunity-production processes of aspiring refugee entrepreneurs in their host countries. Our process data from eighteen refugee entrepreneurs reveal heterogeneity in how entrepreneurs move across the opportunity-production stages of conceptualization, objectifica-tion, and enactment. We identify four patterns, which are characterized by differences in iteration , order, and continuity. By theorizing on process characteristics and connecting these characteristics to embeddedness and temporality, we provide insights into how cognitive alignment and use of networks from home countries versus host countries help expand the explanatory scope of the opportunity-production theory from ordinary entrepreneurs to entrepreneurs who are subject to disruption in their lives.
... Whereas some research has focused on the refugee perspective on labour market inclusion (e.g. Newman et al. 2018;Wehrle et al. 2018) and the mismatch of capital because of migration in general (Erel 2010;Nohl et al. 2010), less is known about the role of organizations supporting labour market inclusion (Landes 2018;Maletzky 2017) and the process of capital transformation. However, since we live in the age of organization societies (Schimank 2005), the transcending relevance of organizations in all areas of life may also be assumed for refugee (labour market) inclusion. ...
Due to their high numbers, refugees’ labour market inclusion has become an important topic for Germany in recent years. Because of a lack of research on meso-level actors’ influences on labour market inclusion and the transcendent role of organizations in modern societies, the article focuses on the German professional chambers’ role in the process of refugee inclusion. The study shows that professional chambers are intermediaries between economic actors, the government and refugees, which all follow their own logics and ideas of labour market inclusion (the state, the market and the community logic). The measures taken by professional chambers mainly reflect a governmental logic (to reduce refugee unemployment) combined with a market logic (to provide human resources to economic actors). A community logic (altruism) only comes into play as a rather unintended consequence of measures addressing the other two logics. The measures of two types of professional chambers are compared. Close similarities between them reveal that the organization type is of theoretical relevance to explain the type of measures organizations opt for.
... Indeed, while minorities were often not included in research, when they were, they were frequently compared to the white majority, and the conclusions often pointed out to some kind of deficit (Downey & Chang, 2014). While many marginalized groups experience challenges, their unidimensional depiction as suffering people robs them of their full, multifaceted humanity, which are less often shared in psychological literature, with some notable exceptions (Goodkind, 2006;Jayawickreme, Jayawickreme, & Seligman, 2013;Wehrle, Kira, & Klehe, 2019;Wehrle, Klehe, Kira, & Zikic, 2018). ...
I examine how experiences of adversity contribute to growth among marginalized groups. This aligns with post adversarial growth theory, which highlights how people perceive psychological growth (i.e., improved social relationships, changed sense of self, and a new sense of what matters in life) after struggling with adverse life events. I specifically examine a changed sense of self through development of a hybrid multicultural identity (HMI) and a new sense of what matters in life among resettled refugees in North America. Studies 1 and 2 focus on how people can grow from adverse experiences to form new understandings of themselves- specifically as a hybrid multicultural. HMI distinguishes itself from additive conceptualizations of multicultural identity in that it is a superordinate identity, unifying people from different cultural backgrounds into a single, shared identity. Study 1 reveals the three primary categories of precursors for the development of a multicultural identity: personal multicultural experiences, perceptions of macro-level marginalization, and culturally related interpersonal experiences. Additionally, on the basis of explicitly and implicitly observed relationships between each of the variables in Study 1, a detailed model of HMI development is presented in Study 1. Study 2 tested this model using structural equation modeling. The measurement model had good model fit (CFI= .961; TLI = .958, RMSEA = .054, and SRMR = .057) and the factor loadings were acceptable. The structural model also had good model fit (CFI = .968; TLI = .966, RMSEA = .045, and SRMR = .072) and the pathway estimates largely confirmed the model presented in Study 1. Further, Study 2’s analysis highlights the importance of culture mixing as the strongest individual predictor of HMI. This work advances current knowledge of HMI development by focusing on the development of HMI through the participants’ experience of their social contexts. I specifically emphasize the developmental importance of (1) social invalidation and other negative appraisals of their social contexts and (2) the degree to which participants experienced culture mixing. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate how people can grow from adversity to create new life philosophies for themselves. I studied this topic using the combined data of a photovoice project with adolescent refugees and an interview project with adult refugees resettled in North America. Across these samples which varied in several dimensions including religion, age, ethnicity, and time of resettlement, a common model of wellbeing was stressed: ontological security (the confidence in the presence, continuity, and order of the things one finds important in life). We found that ontological security in the refugee context included peace of body, peace of mind, rootedness in one’s self, and rootedness in meaningful connections. The participants’ experience with instability and insecurity influenced their value of this wellbeing dimension, however it was apparent that ontological security remained a central aspect of wellbeing even when refugees perceived their lives to be currently stable. On the basis of this work and previous work that has stressed the importance of ontological security, I propose that ontological security is a model of wellbeing, alongside current models of subjective and psychological wellbeing rather than merely a precondition for these ‘higher forms’ of wellbeing.
... In order to investigate how to address the grand challenge of refugee workforce integration, we need a comprehensive understanding of the types of support refugees require, how this support can be provided, and by whom (Wehrle, Klehe, Kira, & Zikic, 2018). Prior literature suggests that in finding sustainable and meaningful employment, refugees rely on NPOs as the first point of contact for various forms of support, including language training, job-search aid, computer literacy, cross-cultural education, and job referrals (Groutsis, van den Broek, & Harvey, 2015;Garkisch, Heidingsfelder, & Beckmann, 2017). ...
Recent research suggests that human resource management (HRM) can play a crucial role in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and in addressing grand challenges, such as refugee workforce integration. This paper investigates how employers carry out their CSR goals through HRM practices, while working closely with non‐profit organisations (NPOs) that facilitate refugee employment support programmes. Using qualitative semi‐structured interviews with employers and NPOs in Australia, we highlight their co‐dependent relationship in addressing the challenge of refugee workforce integration. We demonstrate how the achievement of both CSR goals and social impact is enhanced in this co‐dependent relationship, where each stakeholder's unique expertise and access to resources are shared and leveraged. Our research findings advance the current understanding of the HRM–CSR literature on external stakeholder engagement by suggesting that a co‐dependent, rather than just a collaborative, relationship can underpin the effective execution of HRM practices with CSR goals.
... The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2019) estimates that more than 70 million people worldwide are displaced due to war, violence, or famine. Obtaining employment in host country organizations is seen as critical to refugees' integration into their host country societies (Campion, 2018;Wehrle, Klehe, Kira, & Zikic, 2018). However, for refugees fortunate enough to obtain secure employment, the work often matches poorly with their advanced skills and education (Szkudlarek, Nardon, Osland, Adler, & Lee, 2019). ...
Facilitating refugees’ transitions to host country society is of interest to their host countries and municipalities, employers within those countries, and the refugees themselves. We develop and test a model of how social identity processes, as outlined in self-categorization theory, influence how perceiving one is treated as an insider encourages behaviors reflecting social engagement with host country nationals, both within and outside of work. In a sample of 389 Syrian refugee employees in 88 supervisory units, perceived insider status was indirectly related to work initiative and community embeddedness through organizational identification. These indirect effects were moderated by diversity climate and perceived stigmatization of refugees in the broader society. Perceived insider status had its weakest effect on identification, and was not related indirectly to the outcomes when diversity climate was lower and perceived stigma was higher. We discuss the implications for theory development and practice concerning how social identity salience can inhibit personal affirmations at work from encouraging members of marginalized groups to demonstrate a deeper commitment to the organization and society.
... As a result of the lack of vocational opportunities in the host country, several refugees are pushed to self-employment (Backman et al. 2020;Van Kooy 2016;Shneikat and Alrawadieh 2019). Furthermore, refugees must handle the psychological burden of career disruption in their home countries and re-establish their lives more or less from scratch in their host countries (Shneikat and Ryan 2018;Wehrle et al. 2018). Since the labor-market disadvantages threaten their previous identities, several refugees seek entrepreneurial paths to find a way to build alternative careers. ...
Recently, the entrepreneurial potential of refugees has received growing attention from scholars and policymakers. However, the literature on refugee entrepreneurship suffers from the fragmentation of previous research findings, which has been mainly attributed to the fact that refugees have heterogeneous backgrounds. Tackling this challenge, this study conceptualized the framework for the multiple embeddedness of refugee entrepreneurs by applying and extending the concept of mixed embeddedness. Based on 50 semi-structured interviews with refugee entrepreneurs who relocated to Germany, France, and Ireland, we identified six patterns in which refugees’ multiple embeddedness and their actions as entrepreneurial agencies interacted to develop entrepreneurial opportunities: (i) value creation with homeland resources, (ii) acting as transnational middleman minorities, (iii) integration facilitation, (iv) qualification transfers, (v) homeland-problem solving, and (vi) creative innovation. This study contributes to the literature on refugee entrepreneurship by considering multiple contexts in which refugees can be embedded in and by elaborating on the interactions between opportunity structure emerging within the multiple embeddedness, actions, and capabilities of refugees as entrepreneurial agencies.
... Frequently, these impediments lead to un-or underemployment (Vinokurov et al., 2017), with highly qualified individuals resorting to work in the informal or low-value sectors (Shneikat & Ryan, 2018). In turn, leaving one's field of specialty might lead to lowered self-esteem (Bhugra, 2004) and a reduction of refugees' professional identity (Wehrle, Klehe, Kira, & Zikic, 2018). ...
In line with the emergence of large-scale refugee streams in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa or South America, refugees have become a focus point of public interest around the globe. Interest in the topic of refugees has also carried over to entrepreneurship researchers, who are slowly beginning to investigate the topic of refugee entrepreneurship, after witnessing its emergence as a distinct field from migrant- and ethnic entrepreneurship. Similarly, entrepreneurship in adverse conditions is a field of growing interest, with researchers investigating sources of adversity, such as war or conflict, and their impact on entrepreneurship. However, despite the prevalence of refugee populations in countries characterized by adversity, research on refugee entrepreneurship in adverse conditions is scarce. In this study, building on the status quo of entrepreneurship in adverse conditions and refugee entrepreneurship, I am utilizing an inductive, qualitative multiple case study of nine Syrian refugee entrepreneurs in the adverse conditions of revolution-struck Lebanon to investigate refugee entrepreneurship in adverse conditions. Using this approach, I am able to describe the antecedents, drivers, challenges and outcomes of refugee entrepreneurship in such settings, considering elements from the political, social, individual and situational spheres. I am thereby adding to the theoretical debate by providing the first holistic, detailed model of refugee entrepreneurship in adverse conditions, allowing future researchers to examine the topic in a novel, holistic framework. I ultimately also provide guidance to policy makers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) dealing with refugee entrepreneurship, highlighting both its potentials and pitfalls.
This article focuses on ‘successful migrants’, who have succeeded in gaining employment in Sweden in their previous vocational area. The aim is to describe factors on various levels – individual, organisational and national – that have facilitated migrants’ way back to work as well as their inclusion at workplaces. Twenty migrants and five employers/mentors were interviewed. The overarching theme of facilitating factors concerns language proficiency, individual factors, enabling frameworks, and supporting persons and networks. The migrants’ own ambitions and motivations, and the support they got in interpersonal encounters were especially emphasised as important. In the migrants’ narratives, a central theme in relation to the theoretical perspective was how to deal with threats to their social and professional identity in the new country. For them, maintaining a positive self-image was key to the strength needed to fight for a return to working life. People in the environment were important in this struggle – for positioning them as competent persons and for offering support.
The population structure and life in rural areas have become more diverse in recent years due to the arrival and stay of refugees. The participation of the newcomers in the labour market is relevant on the one hand from the point of view of integration policy and for the regional economy, and on the other hand it fulfils various functions for them. However, little attention has been paid to the (potential) self-employment of newly arrived refugees in Germany. Using the example of the founding of grocery stores in rural areas of Germany, the aspirations of refugees on the labour market, the founding and business practices of operators and the perspectives of customers were examined from multiple perspectives. The qualitative interviews conducted with (potentially) self-employed newly arrived refugees and (semi-)standardized surveys of customers form the data basis for this paper. It is conceptually inspired by the state of research on migrant’s integration to work and immigrant entrepreneurship as well as the subform refugee entrepreneurship. Results show a variety of meanings of employment and a distinct desire for self-employment. Moreover, structural and individual obstacles could be identified in the foundation phase, while co-ethnic employment is considered crucial for the operation of a store.
https://rur.oekom.de/index.php/rur/article/download/191/2086
Purpose
This paper reviews changing government policy on adult education in England over the past 20 years and the funding regimes affecting adult and community learning and union-led learning, which play a major role in learning opportunities for socially excluded adults.
Design/methodology/approach
A review and analysis of extant literature, informed by previous involvement in the sector and ongoing collaborations.
Findings
Two decades ago, adult education in England provided a variety of learning opportunities for people who either had limited qualifications or who needed to reskill for whatever reason. Access to those opportunities has been reduced just when it is most needed.
Research limitations/implications
This is a review and viewpoint paper based on experience in England, the limitations of which are discussed in the concluding section. Notwithstanding the institutional specificities of adult education in England, many of the implications are generic and have wider relevance beyond this country context.
Practical implications
Economic recovery post-coronavirus (COVID) and Brexit will require more access to adult education so people can prepare for labour market re-integration. The practical implication of extending provision in adult education to support labour market integration of vulnerable workers is relevant to most countries.
Originality/value
This paper takes a holistic view of adult education, with particular attention to adult and community learning and union-led learning.
Although forced displacement may lead to many adverse psychological problems, this experience may also result in positive psychological consequences. Given the increasing
disturbance in countries, many people are forcibly displaced, a comprehensive understanding of the posttraumatic growth (PTG) experiences of refugees is warranted.
In this study, we examined 12 primary studies exploring PTG among refugees using the qualitative metasynthesis method. Our analysis of the primary studies consisting of
319 adults revealed four themes: (a) improved psychologic functioning; (b) enhanced interpersonal relationships; (c) reconstruction of the meaning of life; and (d) positive future direction. These findings indicate that no matter how traumatic experiences are painful, people can hold on to life, build a new life, and grow from adversity.
We examine resettled refugees’ construction of wellbeing using semi-structured interviews of Somali, Hmong, and Middle Eastern refugees in the United States and Canada. Resettled refugees’ descriptions of wellbeing center ‘stable security,’ an enduring sense of being secure in the world and in oneself. Stable security encompasses physical, psychological, and social experiences that, together, contribute to a sustained sense of being secure. The participants also described a set of strategies to enhance stable security. We contribute to current theoretical wellbeing conceptions, provide important insights into the dynamic nature of wellbeing and elucidate the pathways identified by refugees to achieve stable security.
Skilled migrants constitute a significant and growing population in our knowledge economy, as they self‐initiate international careers in search of permanent resettlement. Yet, once in the new country, many skilled migrants face dire disappointments in that the jobs offered to them often fall short of their training and aspirations. The current quantitative study combines existing insights from qualitative migration research on the barriers to quality employment with self‐regulation research during job search. We identify mechanisms by which migrants may proactively self‐regulate towards better employment quality. Among 356 skilled migrants in Canada, migration‐specific barriers (a perceived lack of language proficiency and credential recognition) weakened migrants’ self‐regulation efforts in the form of career‐related exploration (goal establishment) and planning (goal planning). Migrants’ proactivity and social support received fostered self‐regulation, however. Career planning, albeit not career exploration, significantly predicted migrants’ quality of employment nine months later, particularly when combined with a high level of credential recognition. Results are relevant for the limited literature on skilled migrants’ transition into the new labor market, the study of self‐regulation in challenging career contexts, and the prevention of unsatisfactory employment.
The aim of this study was to explore the perspectives of ESOL teachers on the language learning experiences, challenges, and motivations that refugees and asylum seekers have when they learn the language of the host country. This information was collected using an online questionnaire, which was completed by 72 teachers from different institutions throughout the UK teaching English to refugees and asylum seekers. The results revealed teachers’ perspectives on the main language learning challenges (e.g. lack of first language literacy) and motivations (e.g. accessing education/jobs) experienced by these learners, as well as the main challenges faced (e.g. lack of equipment) and techniques used (e.g. tailored materials/methods) by our respondents. The present paper presents these findings and any correlations found between the teachers’ responses and their background or their students’ profile, and discusses some implications for language teachers, teacher educators, and policy makers to support refugee students’ language learning more successfully.
This study examines career adaptability of trailing spouses whose comparative advantage most strikingly illustrates the erosion over time of career agency for migrant women, or what is known as “occupational downshifting.” Problematising occupational downshifting as a major obstacle to social integration of trailing spouses, we explore how cultural tensions play out vocationally, and the career choices available to trailing spouses become so diminished over time that their agency can be considered “bounded.” Using a life story approach, our study provides evidence of the lived experiences of constrained agency and paradox of 12 early childhood educators in Australia. Our evidence demonstrates that the choice of moving for the family not only creates occupational precarity, but a more grievous occupational downshifting. We consider strategies like vocational facilitation to address the needs of trailing spouses as individuals, and as such facilitate migrant integration and neutralise the forces leading to occupational downshifting.
Zusammenfassung Wo stehen Geflüchtete fünf Jahre nach der Einreise hinsichtlich ihrer Arbeitsmarktintegration? Der vorliegende Beitrag nähert sich dieser Fragestellung aus einer biografischen und prozessorientierten Längsschnittperspektive. Die Geflüchteten sehen sich der denkbar großen Aufgabe gegenüber, in einer herausfordernden Lebensphase und ausgestattet mit knappen Ressourcen einen Platz in einem gänzlich unbekannten Umfeld zu finden. Auf Basis von zwei narrativbiografischen Befragungswellen mit Geflüchteten aus Syrien wird gezeigt, dass sich bei diesen Suchprozessen vier typische Verlaufsmuster der Arbeitsmarktintegration herausbilden, die auf die Fluchtpunkte Exklusion, erwerbsbezogene Marginalisierung, Re-Normalisierung und Chancenorientierung zulaufen. Wir beleuchten Bedingungskonstellationen und Dynamiken, die den Arbeitsmarktintegrationsverläufen unterliegen und ihnen Dauerhaftigkeit verleihen. Abstract: Refugees’ Labour Market Trajectories in Germany – A Typology of Conditions and Dynamics Where do refugees stand with regard to their labor market integration five years after immigration? This article addresses this question from a biographical and process-oriented longitudinal perspective. In a turbulent life phase, refugees confront the challenging task of finding their economic positioning in a new environment. Based on two waves of narrative-biographical Interviews with Syrian refugees, we identify four typical trajectories of labor market integration: exclusion, employment-related marginalization, re-normalization, and a focus on opportunity. The article highlights factors and dynamics that underlie and perpetuate these integration trajectories.
OECD Report which assesses the labour market integration of refugees in Germany, in light of recent high inflows and policy developments and international good practice. Includes findings from a joint OECD survey with the German Association of the Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
Individuals need a situated identity, or a clear sense of "who they are" in their local context, to function. Drawing largely on interpretivist research, we describe the process of identity construction in organizations. Organizations set the stage for members to construct their identities through sensebreaking, rendering individuals more receptive to organizational cues conveyed via sensegiving. Individuals utilize sensemaking to construe their situated identity as they progress toward a desired self. Affect (feeling "this is me"), behavior (acting as "me"), and cognition (thinking "this is me") are each viable and intertwined gateways to a situated identity that resonates with one’s desired self and a given context. Individuals formulate identity narratives that link their past and present to a desired future, providing direction. If their identity enactments and narratives receive social validation, individuals feel more assured, fortifying their emergent identities. The result of these dynamics is a visceral understanding of self in the local context, facilitating adjustment.
The German system of skill formation, in particular the dual system of vocational education and training (VET), is considered in the political economic debate to be a pillar of the German model, mainly for two reasons: On the one hand, training of skilled workers was supported by the specific path of development of diversified quality production from its beginning. On the other hand, the dual VET system represents one of the most important fields for the German corporatist governance system.
The article develops the following ideas: the conditions of the German VET system fundamentally changed during the second half of the twentieth century: Cognitive preconditions for VET continuously increased, and since the mid-1960s educational reform and expansion in Germany (old Länder) gradually resulted in increasing higher levels of education and in a differentiation of the educational landscape as well as in a shift in young peoples` educational careers towards higher education.
The driving forces behind these developments will be analysed and discussed with respect to their impact on the relation between the dual VET system and higher education. The argumentation results in the following conclusion: Firstly, the broad trend toward upskilling the German labour force will continue and the integration of low-qualified youth into VET and the labour market will become more precarious than in the past. Secondly, corporatist governance of the dual VET-System will come more and more under pressure and become less important in the German educational system as a whole.
H1) This chapter presents an overview of resourcing theory, comparing it with other perspectives such as resource dependence and the resource based view of the firm. After developing an understanding of the basic tenets of resourcing theory, the chapter goes on to explicate three mechanisms of resourcing in context that arise from recent empirical research and are likely to be of value to positive organizational scholars. The chapter concludes with an exploration of how the endogenous nature of resourcing and the potential for ampliative cycles can support positive spirals, a subject of vital interest to those studying positive organizational scholarship.
This article builds upon previous theoretical work on job loss as a status passage to help explain how people's experiences of involuntary unemployment affected their mental well-being during the 2009-2010 economic recession. It proposes a middle-range theory that interprets employment transitions as status passages and suggests that their health and well-being effects depend on the personal and social meanings that people give to them, which are called properties of the transitions. The analyses, which used a thematic approach, are based on the findings of a qualitative study undertaken in Bradford (North England) consisting of 73 people interviewed in 16 focus groups. The study found that the participants experienced their job losses as divestment passages characterised by three main properties: experiences of reduced agency, disruption of role-based identities, for example, personal identity crises, and experiences of 'spoiled identities', for example, experiences of stigma. The proposed middle-range theory allows us to federate these findings together in a coherent framework which makes a contribution to illuminating not just the intra-personal consequences of unemployment, that is, its impact on subjective well-being and common mental health problems, but also its inter-personal consequences, that is, the hidden and often overlooked social processes that affect unemployed people's social well-being. This article discusses how the study findings and the proposed middle-range theory can help to address the theoretical weaknesses and often contradictory empirical findings from studies that use alternative frameworks, for example, deprivation models and 'incentive theory' of unemployment.
This article presents strategies to enhance effectiveness in cross-cultural counseling and psychotherapy encounters. A major assumption is that a coherent orientation is needed that includes cultural differences yet transcends these differences and organizes the human experience in the context of individual world views within the framework of existential philosophy. An understanding of one's own world view and the client's world view are key elements in enhancing cross-cultural effectiveness. Other strategies that can enhance cross-cultural counseling and psychotherapy include a discussion on the knowledge of semantic structures of reasoning and an understanding of culture-its premises and its relationship to effectiveness in cross-cultural counseling and psychotherapy.
Thematic analysis is a poorly demarcated, rarely acknowledged, yet widely used qualitative analytic method within psychology. In this paper, we argue that it offers an accessible and theoretically flexible approach to analysing qualitative data. We outline what thematic analysis is, locating it in relation to other qualitative analytic methods that search for themes or patterns, and in relation to different epistemological and ontological positions. We then provide clear guidelines to those wanting to start thematic analysis, or conduct it in a more deliberate and rigorous way, and consider potential pitfalls in conducting thematic analysis. Finally, we outline the disadvantages and advantages of thematic analysis. We conclude by advocating thematic analysis as a useful and flexible method for qualitative research in and beyond psychology.
The literature on identification in organizations is surprisingly diverse and large. This article reviews the literature in terms of four fundamental questions. First, under “What is identification?,” it outlines a continuum from narrow to broad formulations and differentiates situated identification from deep identification and organizational identification from organizational commitment. Second, in answer to “Why does identification matter?,” it discusses individual and organizational outcomes as well as several links to mainstream organizational behavior topics. Third, regarding “How does identification occur?,” it describes a process model that involves cycles of sensebreaking and sensegiving, enacting identity and sensemaking, and constructing identity narratives. Finally, under “One or many?,” it discusses team, workgroup, and subunit; relational; occupational and career identifications; and how multiple identifications may conflict, converge, and combine.
Many professional and skilled Canadian immigrants suffer from de-skilling and the nonrecognition of their foreign credentials. Consequently, they are underrepresented in the upper segments of the Canadian labour market. Rather than accepting this devaluation of immigrant labour as a naturally occurring adjustment period, I suggest that regulatory institutions actively exclude immigrants from the upper segments of the labour market. In particular, professional associations and employers give preference to Canadian-born and educated workers and deny immigrants access to the most highly desired occupations.
Pierre Bourdieu's notion of institutionalised cultural capital and his views of the educational system as a site of social reproduction provide the entry point for my theoretical argument. I find that the nonrecognition of foreign credentials and dismissal of foreign work experience systematically excludes immigrant workers from the upper segments of the labour market. This finding is based on data from interviews with institutional administrators and employers in Greater Vancouver who service or employ immigrants from South Asia and the former Yugoslavia.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study opinions and attitudes towards immigrants and minorities and their interactions with other barriers to minorities' economic integration. Specifically, the minority experts' own perceptions about these issues, the veracities and repercussions of unfavorable attitudes of natives are to be considered.
Design/methodology/approach
Employing newly available data from the IZA Expert Opinion Survey 2007 main trends in the integration situation of ethnic minorities in Europe are depicted in a comparative manner.
Findings
Robust findings show that: ethnic minorities face integration problems; natives' general negative attitudes are a key factor of their challenging situation; discrimination is acknowledged as the single most important integration barrier; low education and self‐confidence as well as cultural differences also hinder integration; minorities want change and that it comes about by policies based on the principle of equal treatment.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should not only investigate how negative attitudes are formed but also study their dynamics with respect to integration policies.
Practical implications
Well‐designed integration policies, that take the specific situation of the respective ethnic minority into account, are persistent and enforcement of anti‐discrimination laws is desirable.
Originality/value
Using a unique dataset, the innovative study is the first to gauge the perspectives of expert stakeholders and ethnic minorities on their integration situation and the main barriers that hinder it.
This paper proposes a comparison of skill formation in Germany and Britain over the last decades. Taking historical
trends into account, the two cases can be regarded as representing different types of skill production regimes.
Institutional features include a relatively low degree of standardization of training and a larger amount of on-the-job
training in Britain. In Germany, post-compulsory training has been conducted predominantly within the dual system of
vocational training, underlining the vocational specificity of a large part of the labor market. As a consequence,
international differences in individual skill investments, transitions from school to work and other life-course patterns can
be observed. At least in Britain, however, the situation seems to have changed considerably during the 1990s. The paper
argues that the divergence in more recent developments can still be understood as an expression of historical pathdependency
given the traditional connections between the post-compulsory training system and the broader societal
context in which it is embedded. These concern, in particular, links with the system of general and academic education as
the basis for – and also a possible competitor with – vocational training; links with the labor market as they are indicated
by specific skill requirements and returns to qualifications; and, links with the order of social stratification in the form of
the selective acquisition and the social consequences of these qualifications. The links manifest themselves as typical
individual-level consequences and decisions. Founded on the basis of these distinctions, the aim of this paper is to
investigate the preceding conditions for recent developments in the qualification systems of Britain and Germany, which
have adapted to specific challenges during the last decades.
Major perspectives concerning stress are presented with the goal of clarifying the nature of what has proved to be a heuristic but vague construct. Current conceptualizations of stress are challenged as being too phenomenological and ambiguous, and consequently, not given to direct empirical testing. Indeed, it is argued that researchers have tended to avoid the problem of defining stress, choosing to study stress without reference to a clear framework. A new stress model called the model of conservation of resources is presented as an alternative. This resource-oriented model is based on the supposition that people strive to retain, project, and build resources and that what is threatening to them is the potential or actual loss of these valued resources. Implications of the model of conservation of resources for new research directions are discussed.
A hypothesized need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships is evaluated in light of the empirical literature. The need is for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongoing relational bond. Consistent with the belongingness hypothesis, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds. Belongingness appears to have multiple and strong effects on emotional patterns and on cognitive processes. Lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. Other evidence, such as that concerning satiation, substitution, and behavioral consequences, is likewise consistent with the hypothesized motivation. Several seeming counterexamples turned out not to disconfirm the hypothesis. Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.
Human beings can be proactive and engaged or, alternatively, passive and alienated, largely as a function of the social conditions in which they develop and function. Accordingly, research guided by self-determination theory has focused on the social-contextual conditions that facilitate versus forestall the natural processes of self-motivation and healthy psychological development. Specifically, factors have been examined that enhance versus undermine intrinsic motivation, self-regulation, and well-being. The findings have led to the postulate of three innate psychological needs--competence, autonomy, and relatedness--which when satisfied yield enhanced self-motivation and mental health and when thwarted lead to diminished motivation and well-being. Also considered is the significance of these psychological needs and processes within domains such as health care, education, work, sport, religion, and psychotherapy.
Refugees experience a host of traumatic events and stressors in their countries of origin, during flight, and during resettlement. The impact of these experiences on both their physical and mental health is well documented in the literature. However, the potentially positive effects of trauma on well-being are less well understood. The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesize the literature on refugee posttraumatic growth. Posttraumatic growth (PTG) occurs when refugees coherently make sense of their traumatic experiences. As a result of engaging in this reflective process, some experience positive intra- and interpersonal gains. Factors that facilitate PTG, such as social support, coping styles, religiosity, and optimism, will be discussed. The emerging literature on vicarious PTG among mental health professionals working with refugees will also be addressed. This paper will conclude with a set of recommendations for future PTG research with refugees. Research on posttraumatic growth has important implications for the promotion of healthy adjustment and well-being among refugees in Canada.
Job loss and job search are traumatic experiences for mature-aged workers, also because of the threats that these experiences entail to workers' self-concepts and identities. We investigate how job loss threatens such self-definitions, how mature-aged workers cope with self-definition threats, and whether coping can be conducive to psychological growth. We conducted an integrative literature review on extant studies and organized their findings with the help of theories on self-concept and identity threats, coping with identity threats, and identity growth. Job loss threatens mature-aged workers' prior valuable and distinctive self-definitions and disrupts continuity and control of selfhood, while also inflicting threatening provisional self-definitions on them. To cope with self-definition threats, mature-aged workers protect and restructure their self-definitions with alternative goals of either remaining in paid employment or opting out from it. We also identify potential for psychological growth, as the struggle with the trauma of job loss can generate new self-meanings and foster stronger, more authentic and independent selves.
The European refugee crisis has gained worldwide attention with daily media coverage both in and outside Germany. Representations of refugees in media and political discourse in relation to Germany participate in a Gramscian “war of position” over symbols, policies, and, ultimately, social and material resources, with potentially fatal consequences. These representations shift blame from historical, political-economic structures to the displaced people themselves. They demarcate the “deserving” refugee from the “undeserving” migrant and play into fear of cultural, religious, and ethnic difference in the midst of increasing anxiety and precarity for many in Europe. Comparative perspectives suggest that anthropology can play an important role in analyzing these phenomena, highlighting sites of contestation, imagining alternatives, and working toward them. [refugee, media, immigration, crisis, Germany, Europe]
This article describes the concept of posttraumatic growth, its conceptual foundations, and supporting empirical evidence. Posttraumatic growth is the experience of positive change that occurs as a result of the struggle with highly challenging life crises. It is manifested in a variety of ways, including an increased appreciation for life in general, more meaningful interpersonal relationships, an increased sense of personal strength, changed priorities, and a richer existential and spiritual life. Although the term is new, the idea that great good can come from great suffering is ancient. We propose a model for understanding the process of posttraumatic growth in which individual characteristics, support and disclosure, and more centrally, significant cognitive processing involving cognitive structures threatened or nullified by the traumatic events, play an important role. It is also suggested that posttraumatic growth mutually interacts with life wisdom and the development of the life narrative, and that it is an on-going process, not a static outcome.
This article examines the impact of large scale, ‘macro’ role transitions on professional identity. Drawing on in-depth interviews with two different groups of immigrant professionals, it theorizes how organizational outsiders with established professional identities respond to the institutional requirements and specifically to professional pre-entry scripts in their new host country. The study demonstrates how identity work evolves among each group as they navigate the permeable and impermeable pre-entry scripts in their respective professions. It identifies both barriers and facilitators to engagement with, and fulfillment of, local pre-entry scripts. These findings demonstrate how different professional domains and power structures create different opportunities for re-entry and as a result give rise to different forms of identity work – involving, for example, identity customization, identity shadowing, struggle and enrichment. Implications for policy makers in the field will be discussed, focusing on how different groups of professionals respond to unique forms of identity threat emerging from their respective professional institutions and structural barriers.
The article presents a self-concept-based theoretical perspective for analyzing and interpreting employees' reactions to organizational change. The authors suggest that change will be supported to the extent that it is concordant with organizational members' self-concepts. Change will be experienced as stressful and be resisted to the extent that it poses threats to employees' self-concepts, in particular to their senses of self-determination, self-distinctiveness, self-enhancement, and self-continuity. The authors demonstrate the usefulness of this perspective using quantitative and qualitative data from a case study of employees' reactions to office relocation. The authors summarize their findings in terms of testable propositions, suggest directions for further research, and offer some practical implications of the suggested perspective.
Using a multi-year qualitative study, I explain how employees at a fast-growing retail organization used creative resourcing - that is, the manipulation and recombination of objects in novel and useful ways to solve problems. I induce two core organizational processes (autonomous resourcing and directed resourcing) that explain how organizations foster ongoing creative activities in response to different perceived resource endowments. In doing so, I add clarity to a mixed literature that argues on the one hand that limited resources foster creativity, and on the other, that abundant resources foster creativity. Instead, I reorient the questions that scholars ask by shifting the conversation away from variance-explanation models and towards understanding organizational processes, specifically around how employees use resources in dynamic ways and how managers enable them to do so. My study unpacks how the link between resources and creativity is rooted deeply in the actions of managers and employees embedded in organizations over time. In elaborating theory around these actions, I contribute to scholarly and practitioner understanding around how organizations foster creativity in a variety of resource environments. © Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder's express written permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only.
I review and reconceptualize identity threat, defining it as an experience appraised as indicating potential harm to the value, meanings, or enactment of an identity. I also develop a theoretical model and propositions that generate insights into how individuals respond to identity threats originating from a range of sources. I use this theory to explore individual and organizational consequences of different identity threat responses and their implications for research on identity dynamics within organizations.
This article discusses issues faced by refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland who were teachers in their country of origin as they seek to re-engage professionally. Refugees are frequently placed in low paid unskilled jobs, yet have often been well educated in their original country. This article draws on research conducted between 2006 and 2008, by the RITeS (Refugees Into Teaching in Scotland) project, funded by the West of Scotland Wider Access Forum (West Forum). In order to teach in Scotland, a candidate needs to register with the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS). This process has presented difficult challenges for refugee teachers, many of whom require intensive support to access the profession in Scotland. Additional structural barriers to employment are created by refusing to allow asylum seekers, who do not have leave to remain, to engage in paid employment. This article adopts a critical approach to the data gathered and explores the personal, cultural, institutional and structural barriers to employment faced by this particular group. The article draws conclusions and recommendations related to the reprofessionalization of a wider range of refugee professionals. As such it offers insights into the post arrival experiences of professional refugees. © The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Immigration policies and the treatment of immigrants and refugees are contentious issues involving uncertainty and unease. The media may take advantage of this uncertainty to create a crisis mentality in which immigrants and refugees are portrayed as “enemies at the gate” who are attempting to invade Western nations. Although it has been suggested that such depictions promote the dehumanization of immigrants and refugees, there has been little direct evidence for this claim. Our program of research addresses this gap by examining the effects of common media portrayals of immigrants and refugees on dehumanization and its consequences. These portrayals include depictions that suggest that immigrants spread infectious diseases, that refugee claimants are often bogus, and that terrorists may gain entry to western nations disguised as refugees. We conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for understanding how uncertainty may lead to dehumanization, and for establishing government policies and practices that counteract such effects.
The number of recent immigrants and refugees in the United States is growing dramatically. Among key reasons for migration is search for adequate employment and hope for opportunities to develop occupationally. However, recent immigrants and refugees face multiple obstacles in their career development in the United States. This article uses social cognitive career theory to examine the role of relocation circumstances, stressors of migration, acculturation patterns, and oppression on the career development and employment functioning of recent immigrants and refugees. Specific suggestions for career counselors working with this population are provided.
This paper aims to provide an overview of a narrative psychological approach towards the study of self and identity. The narrative psychological approach can be classified as broadly social constructionist insofar as it attempts to examine the cultural structuration of individual experience. However, building on recent criticism of certain social constructionist approaches (such as discourse analysis), it is argued that these approaches tend to lose touch with the phenomenological and experiential realities of everyday, practical life. Accordingly, they overplay the disorderly, chaotic, variable and flux-like nature of self-experience. Drawing on recent research on traumatizing experiences such as living with serious illness, this paper argues that the disruption and fragmentation manifest in such experiences serves as a useful means of highlighting the sense of unity, meaning and coherence (the `narrative configuration') more commonly experienced on an everyday level. Moreover, when disorder and incoherence prevail, as in the case of trauma, narratives are used to rebuild the individual's shattered sense of identity and meaning.
This article will describe a logical and efficient process of developing coherent national strategies in light of environmental forces that are present in the global market. It will then apply that process to the Federal Republic of Germany. The TOWS (threats, opportunities, weaknesses, strengths) Matrix will be used to accomplish this task. The TOWS methodology will focus on aspects of German industries that have had a significant impact - either positively or negatively - on the country’s economy and its position in the European Community and the world. Intrinsic national forces in the social, economic, political, and technological areas will be considered in determining the origin of Germany’s national industrial strengths and weaknesses. External opportunities for and threats to these industries will then be analyzed. After an analysis of a wide array of forces, strategies by German industries will be delineated and alternative industrial strategies will be proposed. Because former West Germany differs very much from former East Germany, the analysis will focus on what used to be called “West Germany”, referred to in this paper simply as Germany.
We develop a model to explain how images of one's work organization shape the strength of his or her identification with the organization. We focus on two key organizational images: one based on what a member believes is distinctive, central, and enduring about his or her organization and one based on a member's beliefs about what outsiders think about the organization. According to the model, members assess the attractiveness of these images by how well the image preserves the continuity of their self-concept, provides distinctiveness, and enhances self-esteem. The model leads to a number of propositions about how organizational identification affects members' patterns of social interaction.
This qualitative study examines objective–subjective career interdependencies within a sample of 45 qualified immigrants (QIs) in Canada, Spain and France. The particular challenges in this type of self-initiated international careers arise from the power of institutions and local gatekeepers, the lack of recognition for QIs' foreign career capital, and the need for proactivity. Resulting from primary data analysis, we identify six major themes in QIs' subjective interpretations of objective barriers: Maintaining motivation, managing identity, developing new credentials, developing local know-how, building a new social network and evaluating career success. Secondary data analysis distinguishes three QI career orientations—embracing, adaptive and resisting orientations—with each portraying distinct patterns of motivation, identity and coping. This study extends the boundaryless career perspective by providing a more fine-grained understanding of how qualified migrants manage both physical and psychological mobility during self-initiated international career transitions. With regards to the interdependence between objective and subjective career aspects, it illustrates the importance of avoiding preference to one side at the neglect of the other, or treating the two sides as independent of one another. Practical implications are proposed for career management efforts and receiving economies. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This article presents an overview of the legal and policy issues affecting refugee and asylum-seeking women in European host societies. First, it explores the unique types of persecution experienced by women and shows that the asylum determination process, along with the status of women relative to men, mitigates against the effective protection of women. The legal basis for asylum, the evidential requirements and the procedural norms all reduce the protection which is likely to be conferred upon asylum-seeking women. Second, the article provides an overview of responses to female refugees and asylum-seekers in European countries of asylum. Although there are differences between countries, there is also a large degree of uniformity. For example, there is a lack of recognition and understanding of the diversity and the range of experiences which refugees bring with them, including different social and cultural norms. Moreover, European policies do not provide special provisions to facilitate the settlement of refugee women and instead place barriers to their social and economic participation. Third, the article examines policies for family reunion in different countries and shows that such unfavourable and unsympathetic policies mitigate against the settlement of refugee women. Finally, the article argues that if refugee and asylum-seeking women are to have their cases recognized and to be successfully settled, then there needs to be a complete rethink of legislation and policy in Europe.
An interdisciplinary synthesis of Canadian research on immigrant employment success points toward key research priorities.
Four determinants of immigrant employment success are widely recognized as significant: immigration policy and settlement
patterns, “entry” and assimilation over time, lower value of immigrant human capital, and origins of immigrants and the possibility
of discrimination. Other determinants include labour market niches, social and cultural capital, and institutional contexts.
Addressing key research priorities—and distinguishing individual and contextual causes—will require new analytic strategies
and sources of data. A companion paper, Part II: Understanding the Decline, applies the framework presented here to research on declining employment success for immigrants.
Une synthése interdisciplinaire de la recherché au Canada sur la réussiteà l´emploi des immigrants révéle des priorités essentielles
de recherche. On reconnaît généralement quatre facteurs déterminants dans la réussite à l’emploi des immigrants: les politiques
en matiére d´immigration et le type de peuplement; l´autorisation de séjour et l´assimilation avec le temps; la valeur plus
basse que l´on attribue au capital humain des immigrants; et l´origine des immigrants et la possibilité de la discrimination.
Parmi les autres facteurs déterminants, notons les créneaux de marché du travail, le capital social et culturel, et le contexte
institutionnel. Afin d’aborder les priorités essentielles de recherché, et de distinguer les causes institutionnelles des
causes contextuelles, il faudra de nouvelles strategies analytiques et d’autres sources de données. Un article complémentaire,
la deuxiéme partie de Understanding the Decline, appliqué le cadre conceptuel présenté ici à la recherche sur le décline de la réussite à l´emploi des immigrants.
Institutional theory and structuration theory both contend that institutions and actions are inextricably linked and that institutionalization is best understood as a dynamic, ongoing process. Institutionalists, however, have pursued an empirical agenda that has largely ignored how institutions are created, altered, and reproduced, in part, because their models of institutionalization as a process are underdeveloped. Structuration theory, on the other hand, largely remains a process theory of such abstraction that it has generated few empirical studies. This paper discusses the similarities between the two theories, develops an argument for why a fusion of the two would enable institutional theory to significantly advance, develops a model of institutionalization as a structuration process, and proposes methodological guidelines for investigating the process empirically.
Recent studies related to global terrorism have suggested the potential of posttraumatic growth (PTG) following experiences of terror exposure. However, investigations of whether psychological distress is reduced or increased by PTG in other trauma contexts have been inconsistent. Results from our studies conducted in New York following the attacks of 11 September 2001 and in Israel during recent tumultuous periods of violence and terrorism, the Al Aqsa Intifada, have found posttraumatic growth to be related to greater psychological distress, more right-wing political attitudes, and support for retaliatory violence. Only when individuals were deeply involved in translating growth cognitions to growth actions in our research on the forced disengagement of settlers from Gaza did we find positive benefit in posttraumatic growth. Findings are considered within the framework of a new formulation of action-focused growth.
A positive psychological theory of growth through adversity is proposed. The organismic valuing theory of growth through adversity posits an intrinsic motivation toward growth, showing how this leads to the states of intrusion and avoidance that are characteristic of cognitive-emotional processing after trauma. The theory posits 3 possible outcomes of this cognitive-emotional processing, namely, assimilation, negative accommodation, and positive accommodation. The theory shows how the organismic valuing process will automatically lead to the actualization of positive changes in psychological well-being, through the positive accommodation of the new trauma-related information, provided that the social environment is able to support this positive accommodation process.
Identity under construction: How individuals come to define themselves in organizations. The Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
- B E Ashforth
- B S Schinoff
Ashforth, B. E., & Schinoff, B. S. (2016). Identity under construction: How individuals come to define themselves in organizations. The Annual Review of Organizational
Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 3, 111-137.
Women and migration: Incorporating gender into international migration theory
- M Boyd
- E Grieco
Boyd, M., & Grieco, E. (2003). Women and migration: Incorporating gender into international migration theory. Migration Information Source, 1, 1-7.
Growing pains and gains: Framing identity dynamics as opportunities for identity growth
- G E Kreiner
- M Sheep
Kreiner, G. E., & Sheep, M. (2009). Growing pains and gains: Framing identity dynamics as opportunities for identity growth. In L. Morgan Roberts, & J. E. Dutton
(Eds.). Exploring positive identities and organizations: Building a theoretical and research foundation (pp. 23-46). New York: Psychology Press.
Journal of Vocational Behavior xxx (xxxx) xxx-xxx
- K Wehrle
K. Wehrle et al.
Journal of Vocational Behavior xxx (xxxx) xxx-xxx