Being an “outsider in”: skilled migrants' career strategies in local organizations

Abstract

Purpose
Although the literature on the careers of skilled migrants is growing, relatively little is known about their experiences inside host country organizations. This article is a replication and an extension of a study by Zikic et al. (2010) on career challenges and coping strategies of skilled migrants. In contrast to the replicated study, where the focus was on the unemployed pool of talented migrants, in this study, the authors look at the career experiences of those who are already employed. Similar to the study of Zikic et al. (2010), the authors seek to explore how migrants understand their careers and what approaches they use to enact career opportunities from the perspective of “insiders” in local organizations.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a qualitative explorative approach. Based on 24 in-depth interviews with highly qualified specialists, who were hired for positions in Luxembourg corresponding to their professional profiles, the authors explore what challenges they face at the workplace and how they tackle them.

Findings
This research not only replicates the study of Zikic et al. (2010) but also extends the authors’ knowledge of the careers of skilled migrants in the context of local organizations. By focusing on employed skilled migrants, the authors open a “black box” of their career challenges and strategies and extend an earlier career typology (Zikic et al., 2010) into what happens within local organizations. In particular, this study identifies two major challenges that skilled migrants experience, namely, “trying to fit in” and “managing career mismatch”. Then, it shows three unique strategies that skilled migrants use to manage their careers. This allows us to cluster skilled migrants into three categories that the authors conceptualized, namely “workhorses”, “career rebels” and “career conformists”.

Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature on the careers of skilled migrants by theorizing the experiences of migrant careers after organizational entry. It also contributes to the talent management literature by providing nuanced insights into the challenges, strategies and profiles that this global talent has.

Full text

Being an “outsider in”:
skilled migrants’career strategies
in local organizations
Ksenia Usanova
Department of Economics and Management, University of Luxembourg,
Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Jelena Zikic
Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies,
School of Human Resource Management, York University, Toronto, Canada, and
Vlad Vaiman
School of Management, California Lutheran University,
Thousand Oaks, California, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Although the literature on the careers of skilled migrants is growing, relatively little is known about
their experiences inside host country organizations. This article is a replication and an extension of a study by
Zikic et al. (2010) on career challenges and coping strategies of skilled migrants. In contrast to the replicated
study, where the focus was on the unemployed pool of talented migrants, in this study, the authors look at the
career experiences of those who are already employed. Similar to the study of Zikic et al. (2010), the authors seek
to explore how migrants understand their careers and what approaches they use to enact career opportunities
from the perspective of “insiders”in local organizations.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors used a qualitative explorative approach. Based on 24 in-
depth interviews with highly qualified specialists, who were hired for positions in Luxembourg corresponding
to their professional profiles, the authors explore what challenges they face at the workplace and how they
tackle them.
Findings –This research not only replicates the study of Zikic et al. (2010) but also extends the authors’
knowledge of the careers of skilled migrants in the context of local organizations. By focusing on employed
skilled migrants, the authors open a “black box”of their career challenges and strategies and extend an earlier
career typology (Zikic et al., 2010) into what happens within local organizations. In particular, this study
identifies two major challenges that skilled migrants experience, namely, “trying to fit in”and “managing
career mismatch”. Then, it shows three unique strategies that skilled migrants use to manage their careers.
This allows us to cluster skilled migrants into three categories that the authors conceptualized, namely
“workhorses”,“career rebels”and “career conformists”.
Originality/value –This study contributes to the literature on the careers of skilled migrants by theorizing
the experiences of migrant careers after organizational entry. It also contributes to the talent management
literature by providing nuanced insights into the challenges, strategies and profiles that this global talent has.
Keywords Challenges, Talent management, Highly skilled migrants, Career strategies, Qualitativereplication
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The war for talent continues to intensify not only on an organizational level but also on a
country level, as many advanced economies experience an acute shortage of qualified talent
(Tarique and Schuler, 2010;Wittek, 2021;Latukha et al., 2022). Organizations are starved for
talented individuals with a high level of knowledge, skills and abilities. In turn, they pressure
their governments to create specific immigration-friendly policies to help entice skilled labor
from all over the world (Vaiman et al., 2018). Attracting skilled migrants to a country,
Skilled
migrants’
career
strategies
Funding: Part of this study was funded by a grant provided by Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council (SSHRC) of Canada with J. Zikic as the principal applicant.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2049-8799.htm
Received 30 September 2022
Revised 23 December 2022
Accepted 6 January 2023
Journal of Global Mobility: The
Home of Expatriate Management
Research
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2049-8799
DOI 10.1108/JGM-09-2022-0051

however, is just the first step in this process; assisting them in adjusting, integrating and
obtaining career success —thereby increasing their chances of staying in the country while
they meaningfully contribute to the economy —is a more complex and challenging task.
However, while much is needed by local economies, research on migrant careers still finds
that they experience career challenges in trying to integrate and continue their careers locally
(Hajro et al., 2021;O’Connor and Crowley-Henry, 2020;Almeida et al., 2019). While skilled
migrants encounter various individual-level barriers in navigating local labor markets (Zikic
et al., 2010), (i.e. motivation and ability to cope with local labor market requirements), their
later integration trajectories, such as talent development opportunities within local
organizations, remain less understood.
To address this research gap, we investigate the careers of skilled migrants employed in
local organizations in Luxembourg. Our first main objective is to open the “black box”of
career experiences of employed skilled migrants. As the point of departure, we use the
theoretical framework on career challenges and coping strategies developed by Zikic et al.
(2010). Therefore, our second objective is to replicate and extend the study of Zikic et al. (2010)
by focusing on the same phenomenon but in a different context (Aguinis and Solarino, 2019).
In other words, this study will focus on the career aspirations of employed skilled migrants
whose initial objective career barriers (Zikicet al., 2010) may no longer be a major issue, as they
already hold a job locally. Indeed, Zikic et al. (2010) described and theorized what kind of career
challenges unemployed skilled migrants face and how they cope with them. However, whether
employed skilled migrants face similar challenges and adopt similar coping strategies is still an
open question (Zikic et al., 2010;O’Connor and Crowley-Henry, 2020;Hajro et al., 2021).
Therefore, here, we focus on the less-understood career success perceptions and tribulations
related to integration and talent development within local organizations. Finally, our third
objective is to understand whether organizations support skilled migrants’integration and
development. Overall, we address the following issue: how skilled migrants manage and
understand their career development opportunities once employed in the host country.
Indeed, studying skilled migrants’career experiences in local organizations is of particular
importance since they are directly linked to migrants’career success and well-being (Zikic,
2015;Crowley-Henry and Al Ariss, 2018;Harrison et al., 2019;Ely and Thomas, 2020) as well
as organizational performance (Vaiman et al., 2018). In fact, from the resource-based view
(Barney, 1991), skilled migrants are unique talents who are difficult to replace and, thus,
should be managed effectively (Crowley-Henry and Al Ariss, 2018). Understanding their
career perceptions can assist organizations in creating a better and more customized talent
management system that will help to develop and retain this global talent (Crowley-Henry
and Al Ariss, 2018). Indeed, career success is a curious construct that embraces not only the
objective status in society but also reveals intrinsic values and motivations (Briscoe, 2021). If
the main goal of research on skilled migrants was previously to understand objective career
success, the focus has shifted to the subjective, psychological perceptions of careers (e.g. job
and life satisfaction and other attitude-based concepts) (Harrison et al., 2019).
To that end, we conducted an explorative qualitative study with twenty-four highly
skilled migrants in Luxembourg. The framework suggested here contributes to the literature
in several ways. First, we unveil, describe and conceptualize how skilled migrants progress in
their careers being employed in a host country. Indeed, this has been largely called for by
scholars since the majority of the studies still focus on the careers of migrants in the pre-
organizational-entry status (e.g. Zikic, 2015;O’Connor and Crowley-Henry, 2020;Sarpong
and Maclean, 2021). Second, by replicating and extending the study of Zikic et al. (2010),we
shed light on whether employed skilled migrants perceive similar career challenges and have
similar coping strategies as their unemployed (or underemployed) counterparts. In that vein,
we extend the career typology developed by Zikic et al. (2010) to the skilled migrant
population inside local organizations. Finally, our framework contributes to the talent
JGM

management (TM) literature, where scholars argue that a more nuanced understanding of
skilled migrants’profiles should be provided (Al Ariss et al., 2013;Crowley-Henry et al., 2019).
Consequently, our framework provides fruitful ground for TM scholars and talent managers
who could use it to develop customized TM systems and retain this valuable talent more
effectively.
The structure of the article is as follows. In the literature review section, we first introduce the
differences between our target population and the population used in Zikic et al.’s (2010) study.
Second, we explain the focus of our study and, third, describe potential career challenges that
employed skilled migrants might experience. Next, we explain our methodological approach and
illustrate our findings. Finally, we highlight the contribution of our study by discussing its
results vis-
a-vis current knowledgeand the literature. Thearticle culminates with the conclusion,
limitations and practical implications of our study.
Literature review
Unemployed skilled migrants versus employed skilled migrants
Both the current study and the study by Zikic and colleagues (2010) that we seek to replicate
and extend focus on a similar population but with a few important differences related to their
employment status. In the study by Zikic et al. (2010), the focus is on unemployed skilled
migrants. They are defined as individuals who bring credentials and experience from other
countries and who seek to settle permanently and work in the host country (Shirmohammadi
et al., 2019). Skilled migrants typically move with the idea of making their host country home
for themselves and their families in the future (Hajro et al., 2019). Another major characteristic
is the proactive and independent character of their move. That is, most migrants arrive in a
host country without any guarantee of work and with few local relationships, if any; thus,
they have to proactively search for work and navigate the local labor market (Hajro et al.,
2019). This is why they have often been described as “forgotten”and “invisible men and
women”(Bell et al., 2010). The population in Zikic et al.’s (2010) study lacks basic indicators of
objective career success and its main goal is to secure employment in the host country. As
Zikic et al. (2010) identified, their career strategies focus on integrating into the new career
reality through finding a job.
In contrast, the current study focuses on employed skilled migrants who already have jobs
in a host country that correspond to their previous work experience. In addition, we focus on
highly skilled migrants (HSMs) who were hired for roles identified as important for the
national economy and that, in our case, Luxembourg struggles to fill with the candidates from
the local skilled labor pool (Guichet Public, 2022). Therefore, this population, although having
overcome career barriers (as being employed in a host country), may have different career
challenges.
Indeed, many organizations, be they international or local, employ HSMs to surmount
some of the talent acquisition challenges many companies experience; however, once hired,
HSMs still experience difficulties in adjusting and growing in their careers (Shirmohammadi
et al., 2019;Wittek, 2021). For example, in contrast to assigned expatriates for whom full
adjustment is optional, HSMs need to adjust not only to the new host country’s culture but
also to the new organization (Vaiman et al., 2015). In addition, while extremely independent
and proactive (i.e. initiating major career/life moves through migration), HSMs are in some
way less constrained by organizational and occupational restrictions and are more prepared
to take charge of their careers instead of relying on their organization to initiate career moves
for them. Consequently, HSMs have unique career and talent development trajectories in host
country organizations that have not been fully understood to date.
To summarize, this study focuses on employed highly skilled migrants who may have
their own specific career challenges and ways to tackle them compared to unemployed
Skilled
migrants’
career
strategies

(or underemployed) skilled migrants (Zikic et al., 2010). Below, we describe the career
challenges and strategies of unemployed skilled migrants and assumptions about the career
aspects of employed HSMs.
Careers of employed HSMs as a focal point of this study. To date, the common issues
addressed in the literature on skilled migrants focus on individual-level barriers, such as
credential recognition or what is commonly known as “human capital translation”(O’Connor
and Crowley-Henry, 2020;Harrison et al., 2019;Risberg and Romani, 2021). In this domain,
studies have also addressed migrants’motivation to move and integrate as well as their
readiness to cope with a variety of challenges experienced locally (e.g. Cerdin et al., 2014;Zikic
and Richardson, 2016;van Riemsdijk and Basford, 2022). One of the major challenges and most
commonly researched topics related to skilled migrant careers in the host country has been their
inability to secure employment commensurate with their level of education. This phenomenon is
described as underemployment or career downshifting (e.g. Fellini and Guetto, 2019). Zikic et al.
(2010) identified how the prospect of underemployment significantly impacted one’s sense of self
as well as one’s subjective career success perceptions. They conceptualized the following
challenges: staying motivated, adjusting to the new identity, gaining new qualifications,
developing social connections and assessing career success. Thus, Zikic et al. (2010) found that
skilled migrants coped with these challenges and presented three career orientations –
embracing, adaptive and resisting –that may also frame their coping and job search
strategies. Skilled migrants with the “embracing”strategy see any obstacle as a welcome
challenge and embrace any career opportunities (e.g. learning). Overall, they are highly positive
about their career experience. People with an “adaptive”career strategy focus on the happiness
of their families and, thus, are ready to adapt their career and identity (e.g. through taking a
survival job). Overall, they see their experience in a positive way, although they acknowledge
some misfortunes. Finally, migrants with a “resisting”career strategy are negative about their
experience; they miss their old professional success and see any challenge as a demotivating
obstacle to continue living in a new country.
Regarding coping strategies, presumably among the different types of strategies identified
earlier by Zikic et al. (2010), employed HSMs could be viewed as pursuing “adaptive”or
“embracing”strategies (Zikic et al., 2010) because of their high motivation to move and ability to
adjust to the new labor market (Zikic et al., 2010;Hajro et al., 2021). Indeed, skilled migrants who
pursue the “embracing”strategy view any career barrier as a challenge and enthusiastically
capture opportunities to learn local know-how and integrate into the labor market. Similarly,
users of the “adaptive”strategy are quite flexible in adjusting to the country’sinstitutional
requirements, so they try to acquire new skills but also find new ways to adjust their existing
experience to the new market. However, we need to investigate more to obtain a clearer
understanding of their career experiences inside of local organizations –how they may engage in
further career growth as unique and highly skilled talent. Below, we describe what is known
about HSMs’integration into the new workplace and their development.
Skilled migrants’integration and development
Migrant integration into local organizations has been an essential yet less understood aspect
of migrant management in host economies (Hajro et al., 2019). There has also been a dualistic
focus on this issue, whereas on the one hand, the onus is placed on the migrants themselves to
“integrate”and fit into the local business culture and society. On the other hand, there is also a
need to focus on organizational and talent management efforts to support integration into
local organizations (e.g. Crowley-Henry and Al Ariss, 2018;Harrison et al., 2019;van
Riemsdijk and Basford, 2022).
Some of the current research describes the potential benefits for local employers related to
skilled migrant entry and integration, specifically in the context of foreign human capital being
JGM

one aspect of the unique competitive advantage (Zikic, 2015;Vaiman et al., 2015;Crowley-Henry
and Al Ariss, 2018;Harrison et al., 2019). However, much of the diversity literature still finds
many related barriers that prevent both skilled migrants and organizations from leveraging this
unique form of human capital (Hajro et al., 2019;Van Laer et al., 2021). These barriers may relate
to individual-level issues (e.g. language proficiency, absence of local network) (Crowley-Henry
and Al Ariss, 2018;Nolan and Liang, 2022;Koveshnikov et al., 2022) or may be much more
systemic and, thus, harder to address, as they center at the level of the organizational system,
culture, local norms and societal attitudes (van Riemsdijk and Basford, 2022). For instance,
Risberg and Romani (2021) found that HSMs in Sweden are seen as a threat to organizational
“normality”, meaning that managers and colleagues feel more comfortable working with people
like themselves rather than people coming from other countries.
Therefore, some empirical studies have attempted to understand how skilled migrants
integrate into new workplaces (van Riemsdijk and Basford, 2022;Carangio et al., 2021).
Several factors were observed that help facilitate that process, such as the social work
environment (Froese, 2012;Rajendran et al., 2017), the international orientation of the
company (Pl€
oger and Becker, 2015) and mentorship programs (Risberg and Romani, 2022). In
terms of talent development, research has largely focused on local employees while
neglecting skilled migrants as a separate group of talent (Collings and Mellahi, 2009;Al Ariss
and Syed, 2011;Vaiman et al., 2012;Crowley-Henry and Al Ariss, 2018). At the same time,
they have emphasized that having diverse talents is crucial to stay competitive in the new
global environment (e.g. Vaiman et al., 2018;Vaiman et al., 2021).
Methodology
Research context
For this study, the authors chose Luxembourg as a relevant context due to the skilled talent
shortages that this country currently experiences (OECD, 2018;PwC, 2021). Luxembourg is a
small country in Western Europe neighboring France, Germany and Belgium that has three
official languages: Luxembourgish, French and German. On the one hand, according to the
INSEAD’s Global Talent Competitiveness Index, Luxembourg is an attractive destination for
skilled talent (Lanvin and Evans, 2021) and has a long history of relying on foreign labor.
Today, 70% of the country’s working population is non-Luxembourgers, represented mainly
by cross-border workers (STATEC, 2022). On the other hand, the growth and development of
new knowledge-intensive industries make the skill shortage more visible, and the demand for
highly skilled specialists is constantly growing. In fact, Luxembourg recently set a “2030
strategy”to diversify its traditional finance-based economy with new industries such as
aerospace, bioengineering, sustainability, digitalization and telecommunication that are seen
as promising additions to the economy. However, it requires rare, highly skilled talent
(Research Luxembourg, 2021). Indeed, according to the PwC annual CEO survey (PwC, 2021),
72% of Luxembourg’s employers are “highly concerned”about the availability of skills. These
emerging knowledge-based positions compel organizations to look outside of Luxembourg
and often beyond the European Union. To ease the entrance of such non-EU talent, the
government of Luxembourg has identified several professions that are deemed pivotal for the
growth of the economy and now allows organizations to hire non-EU skilled talent with a
simplified visa procedure. Among these are managers, accountants, statisticians,
mathematicians and a long list of highly qualified IT specialists (Guichet Public, 2022). In
this study, we focus on non-EU highly skilled migrants occupying these pivotal positions.
Although Luxembourg is viewed as a highly multicultural country, the majority of workers
still come from neighboring European countries (STATEC, 2022). In contrast, non-EU migrants
currently represent the minority among foreign workers (e.g. only 448 non-EU residents received
a special visa for highly skilled workers in 2020) and come from a variety of cultures and
Skilled
migrants’
career
strategies

backgrounds. Therefore, understanding the work experiences and career challenges of such
unique and crucial talent is of great relevance for the economy of Luxembourg.
Research design
With the goal of replicating and extending the framework developed by Zikic et al. (2010),we
applied an “empirical replication”approach (Aguinis and Solarino, 2019, p. 1297). This
implies using similar methods utilized in the replicated study, with a focus on a somewhat
different population. Indeed, according to Pratt et al. (2020), traditional replication techniques
coming from quantitative scholarship are not applicable for qualitative-method-driven
studies since they create serious barriers to the main goal of qualitative research –providing
valuable contextualized insights that focus on “theory building and elaboration rather than
theory testing”(p. 3). Therefore, qualitative replication allows for more flexibility; however, it
should also follow several important principles (Pratt et al., 2020). In fact, qualitative empirical
replication is applicable when the replicated study takes the realist ontological position
(Aguinis and Solarino, 2019;Pratt et al., 2020) and is transparent in its choices of the methods,
data collection, data coding and other methodological dimensions (see all criteria in Aguinis
and Solarino, 2019). The study by Zikic et al. (2010) provides this opportunity. Therefore,
similar to Zikic et al. (2010), we rely on the interpretivist approach and use the career
narratives of our respondents. Indeed, studies on the careers of skilled migrants are based on
similar methods, for example, the “whole life approach”(Litano and Major, 2016;O’Connor
and Crowley-Henry, 2020)or“microstorias”(Sarpong and Maclean, 2021).
Sample
Having reached out to a large number of highly skilled migrants from a variety of
organizations in Luxembourg, we narrowed our sample to 24 respondents who volunteered.
We ensured that our informants met the following criteria: (1) they have professions that are
viewed as pivotal for the economy and for which Luxembourg experiences difficulties in
finding talent in the local labor market (e.g. IT specialists, managers, accountants) (Guichet
Public, 2022); (2) they are self-initiated migrants; and (3) they come from non-EU countries,
since this category of talent tends to experience particular challenges (Fellini and Guetto,
2019). Thus, we interviewed HSMs from India, Russia, Taiwan, Morocco and several other
non-EU countries. None were assigned expatriates or self-employed; instead, they are all full-
time employees who made self-initiated attempts to move abroad and receive job offers
matching their qualifications (see Table 1 for details). To guarantee anonymity, we assigned
pseudonyms to each of the interviewees. As illustrated in Table 2, all the informants are
highly skilled professionals (Guichet Public, 2022) whose work experience varies from ten to
twenty years, with salaries ranging between 60,000 EUR to more than 140,000 EUR a year.
The interviews were all conducted in English, with three exceptions where respondents
preferred to be interviewed in their mother tongue. Since the first author spoke the same
language, we saw this as an opportunity. Thus, when quotes were used from these interviews,
we idiomatically translated them into English to retain the initial meaning (Huiping, 2008). The
interviews lasted from forty-six minutes to two hours. All interviews were recorded with the
permission of the informants and fully transcribed. During a few interviews, respondents asked
us to turn off the recorder to note points that they wished were not recorded. At the same time,
they gave us permission to use that “off-record”information for our research. Therefore, we took
detailed notes and added them to the respondent’s profile immediately after the interview.
Analysis
Similar to the analysis conducted in the study by Zikic et al. (2010), as required by an
empirical replication (Aguinis and Solarino, 2019), our analysis also consisted of several steps
JGM

ID Pseudonym Nationality Gender Education Work experience in total* Work experience in Luxembourg* Age Salary**
1 Diego Mexico M PhD 15–20 5–741–45 130–139 K
2 Petr Russia M MA 25þ5–746–50 100–119 K
3 Artem Russia M MA 15–20 3–536–40 120–129 K
4 Ivan Russia M MA 15–20 3–536–40 90–99 K
5 Rishi India M MA 10–15 0–136–40 80–89 K
6 Rakin Azerbaijan M MBA 25þ3–546–50 100–119 K
7 Habib Morocco M MA 10–15 3–531–35 60–69 K
8 Adrians Russia M MA 15–20 3–536–40 90–99 K
9 Kalpen India M PhD 15–20 7þ41–45 100–119 K
10 Sai India M MBA 25þ3–546–50 100–119 K
11 Rou Colombia M MA 1–52–320–25 60–69 K
12 Maya Colombia F MA 1–53–531–35 60–69 K
13 Besim Bosnia and Herzegovina M BA 10–15 2–336–40 80–89 K
14 Evgeniy Russia M MA 15–20 7þ36–40 100–119 K
15 Rocky India M MBA 15–20 3–536–40 140 Kþ
16 Fedor Belarus M MA 10–15 3–536–40 90–99 K
17 Yating Taiwan F MBA 5–10 5–746–50 70–79 K
18 Elena Russia F MA 15–20 3–531–35 80–99 K
19 Meera India F MA 25þ5–750þ70–79 K
20 Mary USA F MA 10–15 2–331–35 100–119 K
21 Roman Ukraine M PhD 5–10 5–731–35 100–119 K
22 Lea Guatemala F MA 10–15 5–736–40 70–79 K
23 Sam USA M MA 5–10 2–331–35 120–129 K
24 Gala Tunisia F PhD 10–15 5–731–35 100–119 K
Note(s): *The work experience in total and work experience in Luxembourg are indicated in years
**Salary is indicated in EUR (gross) per year
Table 1.
Respondents’data
Skilled
migrants’
career
strategies

and used a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). First, our interview protocol
consisted of questions exploring current career challenges that HSMs experienced and then
we sought to understand how they enacted current career opportunities in the local
organizational context.
Understanding employed self-initiated HSMs’careers is a fairly new area of inquiry (see the
review of Hajro et al., 2019); therefore, it started with a bottom-up inductive approach for data
analysis (Shepherd and Sutciffe, 2011). First, our inductive analysis led us to sixty-two codes
staying as close as possible to the actual words used by the respondents; these were then
compared and contrasted and eventually reduced into twenty-two first-order codes (e.g. “hard to
find my place in a group”,“exploring new work norms”). We created several second-order codes
by mainly using the abductive approach to our interpretation (Alvesson and K€
arreman, 2007;
Shepherd and Sutciffe, 2011) and by the continued comparison method (i.e. going back and forth
between our data and coding categories); in this way, we identified, for example, “career
Demographics Luxembourg
Sex
Female 7 (29%)
Age
<30 1
31–40 18
41–50 4
51–60 1
Highest education
Bachelor’s 1
Master’s & PhD 23
# Years of work experience in total
1–10 4
10–15 9
15–20 8
20–25 –
25þ3
# Years of work experience in the host country
0–1 1
2–3 4
3–5 10
5–7 7
7þ2
Current compensation (EUR)
60.000–79.000 6
80.000–99.000 6
100.000–119.000 8
120.000–139.000 3
140.000þ1
Professional fields of work in the host country
IT 6
Science 3
Finance 3
Management 12
Source(s): Zikic et al. (2010)
Table 2.
Respondents’data are
in the format of a data
table from the study we
replicate
JGM

negotiating and strategizing”. Finally, these second-order codes, as well as our consultation of
the relevant literature on careers and skilled migrants as well as keeping in focus our replication
study lead us to the creation of our aggregated dimensions, for example, “career rebels”, while
being proactive, almost protean (Briscoe and Hall, 2006), these individuals also refused local
norms. For the data structure, see Figure 1. To reach credibility and trustworthiness of the
findings (Pratt et al., 2020), we had several meetings with the research team of this study and
discussed discrepancies in our coding and concept development (Aguinis et al., 2021). In addition,
we reached some of our respondents again to clarify several points.
Findings
Our inductive analysis focuses on how highly skilled migrants understand their careers in
local organizations and which strategies they resort to in trying to succeed. Specifically, our
analysis identifies two main themes related to integration challenges: “trying to fit in”and
“managing career mismatch”. Relatedly, our analysis shows several self-driven strategies
that HSMs pursue to integrate and achieve career success. This led us to the three unique
ways in which HSMs enact career opportunities. We conceptualized them as “workhorses”,
“career rebels”and “career conformists”. Below, we introduce our findings, starting with the
respondents’perceptions of the career challenges and followed by three different career
strategies. Additional representative quotes are displayed in the appendix (see Table 3).
Trying to fit in
Discovering new corporate norms and communication styles. A recurring message shared by
HSMs was the difficulties in understanding and adjusting to the new working style. That is,
Figure 1.
Data structure
Skilled
migrants’
career
strategies

Code Definition Representative quote
1. Trying to fit in
1.1. Discovering new corporate norms and communication style
1.1.1. Exploring new work
norms
Understanding local standards of work behavior “It’s a bit difficult sometimes to agree with my boss. But it’s not a big deal, it’s just
the way we see things and the way we work”. (Maya, female economist,
Colombia)
“And they speak here only about money, maybe because Luxembourg is a
financial center and companies also come here because of taxes. However, this is
what they care about the most”. (Rocky, male manager, India)
“I was surprised that the responsibility is shared by the whole team”. (Artem,
male IT specialist, Russia)
1.1.2. Trying to understand
communication norms
Understanding local standards of professional
communication
“I have a different culture of communication. We [Russians] focus more on
getting to the point, we are straight, and we do not spend time on polite chats.
[...] So, there were some situations, where it was not clear for me how better to
communicate [with colleagues]”. (Evgeniy, male IT specialist, Russia)
“If I think that she is not free to talking to the new person then I do not go myself
to her again so she will not feel weird. Maybe in India we do not respect the
privacy that much and talk to people whenever we want”. (Rishi, male senior
accountant, India)
1.2. Lack of social integration at work
1.2.1. Hard to find my place in a
group
Having difficulties to find a place in a team “All different speaking people grouped together, and I cannot be a part of them.
All the Germans group together. Though I speak German, I’m not a German. You
feel that you don’t belong to any group”. (Meera, female manager, India)
“It turned out that most of my colleagues were French and they had their own
group”. (Fedor, male IT specialist, from Belarus)
“The main obstacle was the fact that this was the first time that I started working
in English completely. So, I mean, I needed some time just to adjust myself”.
(Besim, male director, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
“I found like people are friendly, but they are also very insular. [...] They have
their groups, their know-how”. (Mary, female senior manager, USA)
(continued )
Table 3.
Representative quotes
JGM

Code Definition Representative quote
1.2.2. No friends at work Inability to develop friendship at work “I do not have friends, I have colleagues”. (Habib, male specialist, Morocco)
“A disappointment, maybe, related to the fact that I want to have more
connections at work. Like I do not have friends, for example, among my
colleagues”. (Gala, female senior scientists, Tunisia)
“Like friends-friends? No, I don’t have [them] at work”. (Elena, female manager,
Russia)
2. Managing career mismatch
2.1. Managing broken promises
2.1.1. Unmet expectations Feeling disappointed after realizing that career reality is
different to what was expected
“To be honest, I was tricked. I did not expect that. I was hired for the B
[company’s job grade equivalent to manager]. When I arrived, they told me: “Oh,
no, you’re not B. You are grade D. Your role is a specialist”.I’msorry, either I keep
my title, or I go back. [...] I have not been given the autonomy of my work, which
was a shocking for me”. (Habib, male specialist, Morocco)
“I was expecting that since the office is in Luxembourg, then probably the
company has a “Western”approach. But it wasn’t the case, unfortunately. [...]
The management was pure from post-Soviet countries. Therefore, their core
values were similar”. (Elena, female senior manager, Russia)
“After one year of working [in Luxembourg], I realized that my salary comparing
to other Luxembourg’s places, it is nothing, they paid me nothing”. (Adrians,
male IT specialist, Russia)
“Maybe I was a naı€ve but I thought it would be different”. (Rou, male IT
specialist, Colombia)
(continued )
Table 3.
Skilled
migrants’
career
strategies

Code Definition Representative quote
2.1.2. Occupational status is
different
Finding out that profession in a home-country considered as
a prestigious (or well-known) status while in Luxembourg not
“And they even did not know exactly what my [product-manager] position is
about. I had to explain to them what I do”. (Rocky, male manager, India)
“The situation of IT here is different. IT here is the people who simply execute
posed tasks. They are not expected to have a voice in the business part. It is
always the top-down approach”. (Evgeniy, male senior IT specialist, Russia)
“I was surprised that IT is not so well-paid here. And it is here as a supporting
function, so it is a downgrade in terms of social status here as well”. (Fedor, male
IT engineer, from Belarus)
“Because in Bosnia being part of a Big Four, it means that you are literally top
because they choose like the top candidates whereas here it is different”. (Besim,
male director, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
2.1.3. Inability to learn from
the peers
Feeling being overqualified and thus not being able to learn
from colleagues
“The knowledge I can deliver in my project, the other people cannot deliver that.
[...] Every month I see at least at one or two meetings where colleagues admire
me, because they didn’t know something, and I explain it to them very well”.
(Rishi, male senior accountant, India)
“I am a bit overqualified compared to my colleagues”. (Artem, male IT specialist,
Russia)
“There are no people from whom I can learn a lot”. (Petr, male senior IT architect,
Russia)
2.2. Local market limitation and cultural mismatch
2.2.1. Prejudices about
nationalities
Dealing with the stereotypes about non-Europeans “HR told me that for me, maybe because I am a Muslim, I do not know, it is
impossible to be promoted in that company”. (Habib, male specialist, Morocco)
“I do not know why I was not promoted, maybe because I am a woman or maybe
because of my [Asian] face”. (Yating, female manager, Taiwan)
“They looked at me as at the alien”. (Meera, female manager, India)
“You felt like you were heading to the top position and wanting to get promoted,
however you needed a lot of in-depth European experience. [...] Looking at my
manager and direct boss [...] they’re all locally groomed”. (Sam, male senior
manager, USA)
(continued )
Table 3.
JGM

Code Definition Representative quote
2.2.2. Mismatch of job and
expertise
Lacking certain skills for the new job and inability to use
existing talent
“...is that I have such a great expertise from the technical perspective that now I
am not using fully”. (Sai, male senior manager, India)
“I joined the team [in Luxembourg] that required a lot of technical expertise in
terms of metal engineering. That means running a lot of [technical details]. I
never done any of this before. So that was tough”. (Sam, male senior manager,
USA)
“I need to deepen my knowledge about the fund industry, alternative investment
funds industry especially”. (Maya, female economist, Colombia)
2.2.3. Small labor market HSMs have fewer career opportunities “The market is small. Even though they say that it is dynamic and so on, it is still
hard to change jobs. You really have to be lucky. Like to be at the right moment,
at the right time to find something”. (Elena, female manager, Russia)
“I knew that my contract at the university will be finished so I started considering
to join the industry if I wanted to stay in here [since Luxembourg is small and
academic market is small]”. (Gala, female senior scientist, Tunisia)
“There are only ten companies that could offer me a job”. (Artem, male IT
specialist, Russia)
3. Workhorses
3.1. Working harder
3.1.1. I am always available Feeling the need to work harder “I’m not equipped with French, yes, that is a problem, but I make sure that the
company does not suffer. For example, I am always available. Normally people
here are not available during holidays, while I am”. (Meera, female manager,
India)
“Volunteering all the time. [...] I suggested actively to the team and manager,
proposed ideas and participated in some projects that I liked”. (Ivan, male IT
specialist, Russia)
“They are off the work at 7.30 p.m. here. So, if I want to be better than my peers, I
have to be off at 9.30 p.m.”. (Sam, male senior manager, USA)
(continued )
Table 3.
Skilled
migrants’
career
strategies

Code Definition Representative quote
3.1.2. Step by step learning Slowly getting the local experience and knowledge “I am searching and doing it myself after working hours”. (Meera, female
manager, India)
“Yes, I hired a tutor and learned a language”. (Rakin, male senior manager,
Azerbaijan)
“Indeed, we need to work harder. And we need to invest more in terms of money
and time to learn languages, to get additional education, like technical courses or
MBA. Indeed, people who I know and who have MBAs are all expats [migrants]”.
(Elena, female manager, Russia)
3.2. Proactively integrating
3.2.1. Proactively socializing Making connections with colleagues and professional
community
“I started socializing. I was trying to create a network to whom I can tell my
problem and normally the people are very helpful”. (Rishi, male senior
accountant, India)
“You have to be really open. Otherwise, it will be very difficult”. (Rakin, male
senior manager, Azerbaijan)
3.2.2. Observing and adjusting
to the new norms
Willingness to find ways to understand new norms and
assimilate
“At work, I adjusted by listening and observing attentively everything around,
what people say. I wanted to understand what is going on around and I think it
worked well”. (Evgeniy, male IT specialist, Russia)
“When I realized that French is the main language, I took very intense courses”.
(Ivan, male IT specialist, Russia)
4. Career rebels
4.1. Career negotiating and strategizing
4.1.1. Imposing their own ideas Not being afraid of suggesting their own ideas “I did not agree with his [colleague’s] strategy. Because I suggested a plan and I
was sure that it would work better”. (Fedor, IT specialist, from Belarus)
“I showed a list of their problems on two A4-pages that should be urgently fixed.
Surprisingly, they did not kill me”. (Petr, male IT architect, Russia)
“I was always the best. I was the one who mastered the standards in my own way
and know what should be done or not”. (Habib, male specialist, Morocco)
(continued )
Table 3.
JGM

Code Definition Representative quote
4.1.2. Initiating career
discussions
Discussing career opportunities with possibility leaving the
company
“[The competitor] contacted me and offered me some good money. I went to my
bosses and told them: Look, I cannot ignore this, if you can do something with it,
it would be perfect. If not, unfortunately I will have to leave because this is
significant for me”. (Besim, male director, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
“Well, I went to my line manager and asked her what she thinks, why it happened
[that I was not promoted]? That was disappointing and I told her [about it]”.
(Gala, female senior scientist, Tunisia)
4.2. Being a lone ranger
4.2.1. Creative ways of proving
their worth
Doing work on their own and in their own way “After several attempts, I note everything down on a paper [that I have not
received approval or not received help] and inform upper-management [that
people are helpless]”. (Petr, male IT specialist, Russia)
“I do not have problems of being and working alone”. (Rocky, male manager,
India)
“I was a solo player. I skipped some daily very important meetings, just because I
wanted to spend these 15 min more on my personal task, my personal job”.
(Artem, male IT specialist, Russia)
4.2.2. Rejecting new corporate
norms
Resisting accepting new working culture “I do not want to learn French”. (Besim, male director, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
“I just use the stereotype of being a cold person”. (Petr, male senior IT architect,
Russia)
5. Career conformists
5.1. Accepting the negative side of reality
5.1.1. Acknowledging work
challenges
Acknowledging negative sides “But that kind of concern is just normal. Everyone in Latin America has their
own norms as well”. (Rou, male IT specialist, Colombia)
“I got used to it”. (Adrians, male IT specialist, Russia)
“As any place it has its own advantages and disadvantages”. (Diego, male senior
executive, Mexico)
“Again, the case of the fight between academia and administration is normal in
any university actually”. (ROman, male senior scientist, Ukraine)
(continued )
Table 3.
Skilled
migrants’
career
strategies

Code Definition Representative quote
5.2. Accepting the positive side of reality
5.2.1. Celebrating new career Feeling already appreciated and lucky by finding job in a new
country
“I feel very blessed that I was given the opportunity to really explore and
showcase my skills and get it. [...] [My impression was], well, we made it”. (Sai,
male senior manage, India)
“All of my expectations were either met or exceeded. [...] My career grew
exponentially”. (Diego, male senior scientist, Mexico)
5.2.2. Focusing on quality of
life
Being happy with that is at hand “We are very blessed; we took the opportunity as it came, and we think we took
the best of it. [...] No, I see it in a very positive way. Yes, I could earn much more,
staying back in Guatemala and continuing my career there but here I am happy
because I know that none will jump from the corner on my kids, and none will put
a knife to their throat”. (Lea, female manager, Guatemala)
“The amount of social assistance that is provided to people here is something
staggering. [...] Yes, there is like a lot of monetary benefits that I just can’t get
over, like in a good way. Like, in an amazing way!”(Mary, female senior manager,
USA)
Table 3.
JGM

HSMs had to decode what was valued in the new organization and how to prioritize at work.
They often discovered differing attitudes toward the work-life balance and other implicit
clues of what was considered “normal”local behavior in local organizations. For example,
Evgeniy expressed his struggle to adjust to the new working standards specifically related to
the decision-making style:
It was normal [back in the home country] to make a quick decision on a project, then if on the way it
turns out that it will not work or there is a better solution and we need to step back and redo things, it
was fine. [...] Here, I see that people are very reluctant to make such decisions. [...] I see there is no
such flexibility. (Evgeniy, male IT specialist, Russia)
Similarly, Fillip encountered major differences with respect to how he understood work-life-
balance practices:
They even excluded me from the Slack-chat because I was writing about work during the holidays.
Because this is how I used to work in Belarus. (Fillip, male IT specialist, Belarus)
Thus, the way that HSMs learned about local norms was sometimes by being “excluded”(as
in Fillip’s example), and in this way, through local practices, they were given signals as to
what is “acceptable”and what is not part of local norms. Furthermore, HSMs expressed
difficulties in understanding how to communicate with their superiors or colleagues in
general about what topics can be discussed, how to give feedback, where to draw the line
between professional and personal conversations, etc. Maya, for example, shared how she
discovered that the line between formal and informal communication was stricter in her new
workplace compared to her home country:
People are more professionally distant here. I do not want to say that in Colombia we are not
professional, but here, there is much more distance in regard to professional communication. (Maya,
female economist, Colombia)
Many of the indicated differences are related to the differences between home vs. host culture,
but some were also basic work norms that differed even between two organizations in any
country. The most interesting part was “how”these nuances were discovered and how HSMs
tried to fit in.
Lack of social integration at work. HSMs from non-EU countries working in Luxembourg often
felt like “outsiders”andshareddifficultiesinbecomingpart of local groups at work. The colleagues
they worked with were from other European countries, for example, France, Germany, Italy, or
Belgium, and, naturally, they gravitated to their own groups where they could speak their own
language and have common interests. For instance, Sam expressed his sense of isolation:
It was very hard for me to find my place on my team or with people in my company [...] All the
French folks, they spoke French in their teams and all the Italians spoke Italian. Now, we say English
is the official language, but if everyone is speaking their own language, then suddenly you cannot be
part of that conversation. Many conversations that I find valuable are impossible. (Sam, male senior
manager, USA)
Consequently, many HSMs had difficulties developing connections and creating friendships
at work. They defined their social life at work as “I work, and they pay me”(Adrians, male IT
specialist, Russia) or, more explicitly, “I do not have friends. I have colleagues”(Habib, male
specialist, Morocco).
In summary, our interviewees, although hired for pivotal roles in local organizations as
highly skilled specialists, experienced difficulties in “fitting in”and integrating into their
work context in Luxembourg. They discovered major differences in their work behavior and
communication style, which led to challenges in fitting in, becoming closer to their colleagues
and in communicating in general.
Skilled
migrants’
career
strategies

Managing career mismatch
Managing broken promises. Although having reached objective career success by being hired
into a position corresponding to their professional profile (unlike the sample in Zikic et al.,
2010), HSMs faced unmet expectations, experienced disillusionment and continued to feel at
the periphery or as an “outsider in”. For example, Mary shared:
Like I’m working at a higher level, but I have not been brought into the fold at that level either. The
upper management to whom I report, they still call me by the wrong name. [...] The CEO here, there
is one person between me and him, he does not know me at all. [...]I’m very like an “outsider in”in
regard to like the upper echelons. (Mary, female senior manager, USA)
Similarly, while Ivan expected to be “involved in strategic tasks”, instead, he was sent to the
client side to execute technical tasks: “In fact, when I arrived, they just rented me out to the
client”(Ivan, IT specialist, Russia).
Another challenge that was highlighted was a different occupational status compared to
their home country. For example, one senior academic described that he was puzzled when he
felt a slightly disrespectful attitude from the administration:
Administration is maybe coming from financial sector here and kind of feels “above”the academic
staff, which is very strange. Because, for example, salary wise, academic staff earn more, except
maybe PhD students, but administrative people still feel that they are above. (Diego, male senior
executive, Mexico)
Likewise, Petr expressed his astonishment about his profession:
IT in Moscow is such a big status indicator; it is much more than the average level of income. IT
specialists in Moscow are some kind of elite. Here, it is not the case. (Petr, male senior IT architect,
Russia)
This mismatch in expectations is also sometimes reflected in romanticized views on what the
roles entail or, in general, the level of professionalism locally. For example, Artem thought
that “probably they do rocket science here”; however, after starting with the local employer,
he realized that he is “overqualified”(Artem, senior IT specialist, Russian). This is a recurring
finding for many HSMs, leading to disappointment in terms of learning from peers.
Local market limitations and cultural mismatch. Finally, HSMs also faced unexpected
prejudices about their nationalities preventing them from succeeding locally. Despite the
multicultural context of Luxemburg being one of the reasons to come there (“I chose it because it
is the most expat-friendly country”(Rakin, senior manager, Azerbaijan)), many HSMs described
difficulties in reaching subjective career success, perhaps due to their “third-country origin”.
Below, Meera is quite confident that she was not promoted because of her nationality:
People do have prejudices here. [...] It is the impression that people have about third-world countries,
or the language we speak. [...]...we are not from Europe, not a white person, not a man. A lot of
things are barriers for the career. (Meera, female manager, India)
Related to the mismatch in terms of their career expectations (i.e. relational to promotion),
HSMs also felt that they were not able to use their human capital to the highest potential.
They felt a mismatch between the job they were doing and the expertise they had developed
in their home country. For example, Habib felt frustrated by not being able to use his
talent fully:
I just do not understand why I cannot use all the skills that I have. For example, I am also a certified
trainer. Therefore, skill wise, they do not profit from all of my skills. (Habib, male specialist, Morocco)
Finally, the size of the country was noticed by several HSMs as a career challenge and a
limitation for them. For example, one manager explains:
JGM

I am searching now for other options, but Luxembourg is small. It does not mean that it is bad, it
means that the market is also very limited, so it is not that easy to change and find [another] job.
(Yating, female manager, from Taiwan)
To conclude, HSMs perceive several career challenges that are related to emotional
disappointment (“managing broken promises”) and external inhibitors of career growth
(“local market limitations and cultural mismatch”). Next, we describe our findings related to
the patterns of responses and self-driven strategies that HSMs used to pursue career
opportunities in a host country.
Three types of self-driven career strategies
Workhorses
Working harder. Given the above challenges, some HSMs pursued the strategy of proving
themselves by working harder than local colleagues. This could be understood best as
working longer hours, always being available, volunteering for various tasks and constantly
being willing to expand their knowledge. This is how Elena describes her working day and
active learning:
I am always going the extra mile, I spend extra time, and it is of course my personal time. [...] I pay
attention to that because I want to be available, and I want my employer to value me and be satisfied.
The expats [migrants] that I know typically work harder than the locals. (Elena, female manager,
Russia)
These HSMs acknowledged that their lack of in-depth European experience or perhaps lower
language proficiency should be seen in the context of other abilities, specialized skills and the
value overall that they are able to bring locally. For example, Maya also expressed her career
approach as “step by step”, that is, slowly gaining new knowledge and reaching her career
objectives. Another respondent mentioned, “I have always been volunteering, suggesting
new projects”(Ivan, male senior IT specialist, Russia). Overall, these HSMs are driven by the
idea of proving themselves through going above and beyond, often overworking and
pursuing additional learning opportunities after work:
I just had to prove myself, that I am worthy to live in the European Union. (Rakin, senior manager,
Azerbaijan)
Proactively integrating. These HSMs were not just working harder but also believed in the
importance of “breaking the wall between them and their colleagues”and trying to integrate
proactively by strengthening their local professional network, for example. One of the
respondents, Maya from Colombia, made it her goal to go beyond her native language-
speaking network. As another example, Yating had a holistic approach to integrating
at work:
I always had lunch with my colleagues, especially French speaking, to practice my French. I also
attended after-work drinks and tried to go out with my colleagues during the weekends, for example,
concerts and hiking. (Yating, female manager, Taiwan)
This group of HSMs also showed their strong willingness to accept and adjust to the new
working norms. The recurring finding was “observing and adjusting”. This is, proactively
finding ways to understand new norms (no matter how different) and be willing to adapt. For
example, Rakin advised:
It is important to adjust. You see how people are smiling. You see how they are in Europe in general.
Of course, Luxembourg is different because Luxembourg is small, and they are very friendly here.
However, it is also a matter of principal to adapt. (Rakin, senior manager, Azerbaijan)
Skilled
migrants’
career
strategies

Overall, this group of HSMs could be described as high achievers who try to prove themselves
by going the extra mile, and this is how they try to reach their career success. They work
harder, they volunteer and are always available. They also try to proactively integrate into
the work environment by adjusting, listening and purposefully socializing.
Career rebels
Career negotiating and strategizing. However, other HSMs, after realizing that reality does not
truly meet their expectations, decided not to accept it and instead pursued a different route.
The dominant theme for this group was that they were proactively involved in conversations
with their superiors (i.e. the top management team); at times, they even threatened to leave if
their career aspirations were not met. For example, Kalpen shared his experience as follows:
I told them, look, if there is no other position for me, I will take this technology that I developed and
leave. However, she [the boss] said that they want to keep me, and they will find a way to make me
stay. (Kalpen, male director, India)
Additionally, they are not afraid to step forward and impose their own ideas based on their
previous experience. For example, Rocky emphasized the success of his ideas:
Some of the things I implemented were working. [...] Even the performance showed that we had the
biggest sales in a nine-ten-month period in the company. (Rocky, male manager, India)
Being a lone ranger. These HSMs also created their own ways of proving their worth. For
example, Habib told us:
It was very hard to get approval [of tasks] by the top managers. So, what I did, I did all the work
without approval. So, I have many, many documents completed but not approved. But this is how I
justified my work by showing the deliverable. (Habib, male specialist, Morocco)
Similarly, HSMs in the group neglected and rejected adjusting to the new corporate norms.
For example, they never talk about listening or observing the environment around them.
“I just do things how I did them before”(Fedor, male IT specialist, Belarus). “I think people
already know here that Indians are very technology savvy”(Rocky, male manager, India).
Thus, interestingly, they also found creative ways to leverage some of the existing
stereotypes in trying to achieve their goals.
In summary, in going against organizational norms to some extent, HSMs in this group
could be described as lone rangers who do not agree with or accept the given reality or the
status quo (i.e. existing corporate norms in the local organization). They would rather
negotiate and strategize by imposing their own ideas, look forward to creative ways to prove
their worth, or even threaten to quit in some cases.
Career conformists
Accepting the negative side of reality. Some HSMs also managed their career challenges by
accepting the difficulties for what they were and trying to move forward within those
boundaries. Indeed, these HSMs were quite complacent in how they described their career
experiences, often acknowledging various work challenges but perceiving them as simply
part of the new reality. For example, Roman describes his attitude toward the uncertainty
about his promotion:
There is some networking, but networking is everywhere [...] because at the end, whenever you get
promoted to a certain level you must have a network and know people, so it’s a natural factor for a
promotion anywhere. (Roman, male senior scientists, Ukraine)
JGM

Accepting the positive side of reality. HSMs in this group also emphasized that they already
considered it a “success”that they were hired into these positions (i.e. requiring a high level of
skill); thus, they celebrated this new career “as is”. For example, they emphasized that overall,
their expectations were met or even exceeded. Others expressed that they were “blessed”and
“lucky”to be hired in a new host country such as Luxembourg, and for them, it is already a
career success:
Well, we made it (Sai, senior manager, India).
Many HSMs also referred to subjective aspects of career success, such as the quality of life in
general, ascribing it to the new career they had in the host country. Other aspects of their lives
were also mentioned, such as better work-life balance, the safety of their children, social
support for the family from the government and other positive aspects. This is how Lea
explained her attitude:
...yes, it is difficult. However, overall, it is very positive. [...]It’s more like safety, the opportunities
for my kids to learn languages, to travel around and meet people. Therefore, I think it is the way to
open their mind. They are different than kids in Guatemala who do not have these opportunities.
(Lea, female manager, Guatemala)
To conclude, these quotes highlight those HSMs who accept reality as it is —be it positive or
negative. Their attitude is often, “I’ll get used to it”, even when acknowledging career
difficulties. Thus, they mostly conform to their career realities. We display an overview of our
findings in Figure 2.
Discussion
Theoretical contributions
In this study, we explored how highly skilled migrants (HSMs) understand their careers and
what approaches they use to enact career opportunities in a host country. This research opens
the “black box”of what career challenges these talents experience and how they tackle them.
This research is a replication as well as an extension of the seminal study by Zikic and
Figure 2.
Summarizing overview
Skilled
migrants’
career
strategies

colleagues published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior in 2010, one of the first studies
to explore coping strategies of skilled migrants looking for work in three different host
countries. We extend this study by focusing on HSMs post-organizational entry and whose
goal is to progress in their career. This is an important extension, as most of the current
studies on skilled migrants focus on career challenges pre-organizational entry (Zikic et al.,
2010;Fellini and Guetto, 2019;O’Connor and Crowley-Henry, 2020); thus, we extend this work
by exploring how HSMs embrace career opportunities in local organizations of the host
country. We discuss our findings below in light of the literature.
Career challenges: trying to fit in and manage career mismatch. This research contributes
to the currently limited literature on migrant integration, specifically by highlighting career
challenges related to “fitting into local organizations”. HSMs struggled to understand and
adopt new corporate norms that also impacted their social integration experiences. This is
somewhat surprising since Luxembourg is viewed as one of the most multinational countries
in the world (Lanvin and Evans, 2021); yet, non-EU HSMs still experience difficulties in
finding their own place. This finding could also be explained by the fact that foreign workers
coming from EU countries represent the majority of workers in the country, and they
typically tend to stick to their own groups, often excluding non-EU HSMs. Indeed, this could
be explained not only by the language barrier but also by local coworkers’fear of threatening
their “normality”(see Risberg and Romani, 2021), since non-EU HSMs, although also, as
migrants, may be seen as “outsiders”or different than the “norm”.
Another important career challenge identified in this study is managing the perceived
“career mismatch”. While HSMs were initially hired for professions identified as highly
needed for the national economy, they continued to face several disappointments associated
with broken promises and structural barriers preventing desired career progress. Thus, we
highlight that even post-organizational-entry HSMs continue to feel like “outsiders”and
somewhat peripheral to the mainstream organizational elite (e.g. Zikic and Richardson, 2016),
typically mentioning a lack of in-depth European experience as one of the main barriers to
growth. These findings confirm and extend earlier conceptual pieces, discussing implicit
discrimination (i.e. Hajro et al., 2019) as well as some empirical work looking at entry barriers
(i.e. Almeida et al., 2019); we also complement the findings on benevolent discrimination by
Romani et al. (2019) and explain that HSMs continue to be viewed as not “ideal”candidates for
certain roles, in particular roles with greater responsibilities (Van Laer et al., 2021).
Finally, while we cannot claim that HSMs experienced typical “status deprivation”(Harrison
et al., 2019) or even fewer survival jobs (Zikic and Richardson, 2016), we extend this research by
showing that even when they obtain jobs at a level commensurate with their original
qualifications, they often face an inability to learn from their peers. This could possibly be
explained by the fact that HSMs were hired for positions that Luxembourg currently lacks (see
Guichet Public, 2022). Consequently, as HSMs bring unique skills and experience, they again
perceive a mismatch in terms of advancing and learning from their local team (this was likely
exacerbated by different work and communication norms and difficulties in “fitting in”).
These findings are the first, to the best of our knowledge, to highlight specific career
challenges of employed HSMs and conceptualize them into two main issues. Although some
aspects of “managing career mismatch”and “trying to fit in”challenges have been mentioned
before, this study provides a more fine-grained view of these issues by highlighting its
constituting components.
Career strategies: a typology of HSMs. The career strategies that emerged from our study
confirm that self-initiated HSMs are very independent and self-directed in their careers (Hajro
et al., 2019). Without much guidance from local mentors or human resource management
professionals, some HSMs realized that going above and beyond their immediate work goals and
tasks was their strategy for reaching career success and integration (“workhorses”). In that vein,
we confirm that migrants often must work twice as hard to overcome career challenges
JGM

(e.g. Hajro et al., 2019;Sarpong and Maclean, 2021). Contrary to this approach, “career rebels”
tried to negotiate and strategize their approach to overcome career barriers. At the same time,
they did not seek to necessarily integrate into the workplace, but rather searched for creative
strategies to prove their worth and work independently. This career strategy is particularly
interesting since these career actors appear as “lone rangers”who still achieve career success,
contradicting the assumption that work integration (i.e. accepting local norms) is the only viable
path to local career success (e.g. Harrison et al., 2019;van Riemsdijk andBasford, 2022). Finally,
the third type of HSMs was identified as “career conformists”, that is, accepting reality as it is,
acknowledging positives and accepting negatives.
In fact, compared with the dual coping strategy framework (Lazarus and Launier, 1978),
“workhorses”and “career rebels”use the problem-focused strategy, while career conformists
present more of an emotion-focused strategy. Indeed, as “workhorses”and “career rebels”
focus on various career actions (e.g. working harder or negotiating, respectively), “career
conformists”focus on either acknowledging the challenges related to career growth or on the
positive aspects of their new career experience. In that vein, our findings add to this
framework by showing a more nuanced view of how HSMs cope with career challenges and
how problem- and emotion-focused strategies are operationalized in the context of the careers
of HSMs employed in host country organizations.
Finally, compared to the study that was the focus of this replication, we find that current
findings compare to and extend Zikic et al. (2010) in two specific ways. First, in each case,
there is a group seeking to proactively integrate. Namely, our conceptualization of
workhorses implies a pattern of proactive integration and adaptation to the local work norms
that parallel skilled migrants’“embracing”strategy in finding a job (Zikic et al., 2010). Second,
our conceptualization of career rebels (i.e. the pattern of rejecting the new corporate norms) to
some extent parallels the efforts of skilled migrants identified by Zikic et al. (2010) to resist the
country’s requirements to pursue new careers locally. Overall, we conclude that the career
strategies of employed HSMs somewhat differ from those of skilled migrants seeking to enter
the local labor market. However, there are also important parallels with the career barriers
that both employed and unemployed skilled migrants experience.
Overall, this study is the first to attempt to conceptualize coping strategies of HSMs in the
context of post-organization entry. This empirical evidence and theorization combined with the
study that was the focus of this replication together contribute to and extend the literature on
skilled migrants’careers; specifically, by providing a more granular picture of “how”HSMs both
search for work opportunities and navigate the local labor market as well as reach their career
success inside of local organizations. Thus, we provide a more holistic view of challenges and
career barriers and extend the earlier typology of what happens inside local organizations.
Talent management for HSMs. Additionally, one of the initial objectives of this study was
to understand how HSMs integrate into host country organizations, especially in the context
of local talent management efforts. However, our findings show that HSMs do not receive any
specific support. Some are included in the ongoing TM activities (for example, exclusive
formal programs for selected individuals or inclusive and extensive training programs for all
employees) (Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2015), whereas others worked for companies where TM,
as a strategic and innovative HRM approach, was absent. The only specialized support that
could be derived from the narratives of HSMs was the possibility of taking language courses
(although they were rather short-term focused).
We believe this is an important finding. While scholars emphasize the importance of
focusing on HSMs and including them in the organization’s TM efforts (e.g. Vaiman et al.,
2015;Crowley-Henry and Al Ariss, 2018;Latukha et al., 2022;Zikic, 2015;Harrison et al.,
2019), none of the employers in question seem to have any specific TM-related programs or
meaningful organizational efforts to support their HSMs, regardless of whether they are large
multinational corporations or local smaller companies (Rajendran et al., 2017). This may be
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explained by the fact that some organizations often give up on diversity initiatives as soon as
they see no clear or immediate return on investment (Thomas, 2004;Ely and Thomas, 2020).
In summary, our study contributes to the literature on the careers and integration of
skilled migrants as well as talent management. Our typology extends current studies on the
career paths of skilled migrants by highlighting the nature of subjective career success inside
local organizations (e.g. Zikic et al., 2010;Cerdin et al., 2014;O’Connor and Crowley-Henry,
2020). This could serve as a foundation for further empirical work as well as theorizing on the
career experiences of employed HSMs (Tharenou and Kulik, 2020;Sarpong and Maclean,
2021). Furthermore, our study contributes to the talent management literature by providing a
better understanding of HSMs’reactions to career barriers. These findings related to the
coping typology also provide a foundation for developing more specialized and effective TM
systems that will help to develop and retain this unique talent (e.g. Vaiman et al., 2015;
Crowley-Henry and Al Ariss, 2018) and more adequately respond to their needs. Finally,
taking into account the national context of this study —the highly international and
developed Luxembourg —we note the surprising finding that non-EU HSMs still continue to
experience significant career barriers and unequal treatment, perhaps pointing to the
“hierarchy of foreigners”and how they are treated locally (Ryan and Silvanto, 2021).
Conclusion, limitations and practical implications
In this article, we replicate and extend the theoretical framework developed by Zikic and
colleagues (2010). The goal of this study was to reveal and compare career barriers and career
strategies the employed HSMs have with those skilled migrants who are unemployed or
underemployed in a host country. Recently, scholars have emphasized the dearth of
microlevel research on the careers of self-initiated highly skilled migrants and the importance
of understanding how employed HSMs progress in their careers (e.g. Al Ariss and Syed, 2011;
Crowley-Henry and Al Ariss, 2018;Hajro et al., 2019). To that end, we identified career
challenges that HSMs experience in a host country and theorized three coping strategies that
HSMs use to succeed in the new labor market.
Our study is not without limitations. Although Luxembourg is a fascinating new context
for studying the careers of skilled migrants (Baruch and Sullivan, 2022), it could create
obstacles to the attempts to generalize our results, given the small size of its economy and
labor market. Therefore, it would be useful to replicate our study in similar highly developed
international countries, such as Lichtenstein, Switzerland or Singapore, to see whether HSMs
experience similar career challenges. Second, although we identified important career
strategies, we did not focus on the motives as to why those strategies were chosen by HSMs.
In other words, the reasons behind particular choices remain underexplored. Consequently,
future research could examine the interplay of different factors, for example, whether
personal characteristics (at the individual level) or contextual factors (at the organizational or
team levels) impact the choice of one strategy over another (Guo et al., 2021).
By conceptualizing career challenges and the three types of career strategies of HSMs, we
also intend to provide practical guidance for talent managers, organizations, policy-makers
and HSMs themselves. We argue that organizations should pay particular attention to HSMs
in their talent pool if they want to leverage their unique human capital to the fullest extent
(Crowley-Henry and Al Ariss, 2018). In particular, the three types of career strategies
developed here can be used by talent managers and HR specialists to better understand
HSMs’needs and subsequently develop even more effective TM strategies in their
organizations (Al Ariss and Crowley-Henry, 2013;Crowley-Henry and Al Ariss, 2018). For
instance, talent managers can contribute to retaining so-called “career rebels”by helping
them manage their career expectations and better adjust to existing corporate culture, among
other actions. Furthermore, specialized talent management programs and training for local
JGM

managers and colleagues on cultural differences will create a more trusting culture in the
company and help HSMs to be better integrated at work (Ely and Thomas, 2020).
Another recommendation for organizations would be to provide specialized onboarding to
better integrate HSMs (Tharenou and Kulik, 2020). This should include providing realistic job
previews and an overview of career opportunities, including explaining the status of certain
professions and specific professional requirements for advancing one’s career in a given
country context (Zikic, 2015). Another important recommendation for organizations is to
ensure that the top management ranks encompass a more diverse population, including
representatives of the international (and especially underrepresented) workforce, which may
help to not only attract but also retain talented migrants in the organization. This move, along
with other similar actions, can also positively affect the desire of HSMs to stay in the host
countryinthelongrun,therebycontributingtothatcountry’s attractiveness,
competitiveness, economic development and other positive macrolevel outcomes
(Fernando and Patriotta, 2020;Ryan and Silvanto, 2021;Vaiman et al., 2018).
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About the authors
Ksenia Usanova is a PhD student at the Department of Economics and Management at the University of
Luxembourg. She develops her research activities on talent management in different contexts. In
particular, she studies how talent management shapes experiences of different categories of talented
employees, such as skilled migrants, high technology talent and high performers in not-for-profit sector
and others. Ksenia Usanova is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: ksenia.usanova@
uni.lu
Jelena Zikic, PhD (University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management) is an Associate Professor,
School of Human Resource Management, York University in Toronto. Her expertise centers on career
transitions of diverse populations, especially skilled migrants as well as other groups (e.g. unemployed,
entrepreneurs, baby boomers, graduates, expats) who need to cope with stress and career challenges.
Currently she is studying labor market integration of skilled migrants and cross-cultural mentoring
relationships in several SSHRC supported studies. Dr Zikic has significant international background
and experience, previous to York University she was teaching and living in Italy, Spain and the UK. Her
work appeared in leading journals in the field (i.e. Academy of Management Discovery, Journal of
JGM

Organizational Behavior, Human Relations among others) as well public media outlets such as the Globe
and Mail newspaper, Harvard Business Review, and CTV news.
Vlad Vaiman is Professor and the Associate Dean at the School of Management of California
Lutheran University and a visiting professor at several premier universities around the globe. He has
published six books on managing talent in organizations and at a country level, as well as a number of
academic and practitioner-oriented articles and book chapters on talent management and International
HRM. His work appeared in Academy of Management Learning and Education, Human Resource
Management, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management
Review, Journal of Business Ethics, and many others. He is also a founding editor and the Chief Editorial
Consultant of the European Journal of International Management, and an editorial board member of
several academic journals, such as Human Resource Management, European Management Review, and
Human Resource Management Review, among others. He is a founder, organizer, and a leading chair of
the EIASM Workshop on Talent Management, as well as the editor of the Emerald Book Series on Talent
Management.
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