Journal of Vocational Behavior 78 (2011) 321–324

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Journal of Vocational Behavior

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Editorial

Migration: Vocational perspectives on a complex and diverse transition

Laurie Cohen a,⁎, John Arnold b, Maggie O'Neill c

a School of Business & Economics, Loughborough University, Epinal Way, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UKb Institute of Work Psychology, Sheffield University, Mushroom Lane, Sheffield S10 2TN, UKc Reader in Criminology, School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University, 32 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o

⁎ Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: l.cohen@lboro.ac.uk (L. Cohen),

0001-8791/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc.doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2011.03.011

a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 17 March 2011Available online 21 March 2011

This paper outlines the origins of this special issue: a UK Economic and Social Research Councilsupported seminar series on ‘Careers and Migration’. The series elucidated a number of salient(though under-researched) issues: migration as a diverse and complex process; the loss,recovery and reconstruction of career capital as central in the migration experience; insecurity,security and their dynamic interplay; the salience of relationships with family, compatriots andcommunities in migrants' career development; and the appropriateness of creative approachesin researching migrants' careers. The seven articles, written by interdisciplinary authorialteams (sometimes working in different occupational sectors) contribute to our understandingsof these pressing concerns.

© 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords:CareerMigrationGlobablizationExpatriate assignmentsCareer/vocational guidance and counsellingCareer development interventions

It is widely recognized that globalization has fundamental implications for the careers of people across geographical andcultural boundaries (Baruch, Budhwar & Khatri, 2007; Iredale, 2001). The forms of what we might call ‘career migration’ are manyand varied, triggered by the convergence of a wide range of economic, political, socio-cultural and individual circumstances (Carr,Inkson & Thorn, 2005). In the broadest sense, we can distinguish between voluntary and forced migration. The former includespeople who, acting either as individuals or with organizational sponsorship, choose to develop their careers outside of their homecountry. By forced migration we are referring to asylum seekers and refugees who flee their countries at times of crisis. Of course,there are also gray areas, for example migrants who feel their prospects in their country of origin are deeply unattractive yet whoare not technically being displaced or in personal danger. The careers field has focused on voluntary career migrants, especiallythose with relatively high levels of skill and qualification who are moving within a multinational corporate structure.

Although scholars have in recent years debated changing workforces in the contemporary context, careers are still seen as byand large enacted within more economically developed countries, and explanations involving free choice are privileged overdeterminism and constraint. While migration scholars as well as policy-makers and practitioners in education, employment andNon-government sectors have long been addressing issues of migration and work (O'Neill & Spyby, 2003; Marfleet, 2006; Bloch,2002; Department of Work & Pensions, 2005), their research has so far made few inroads into the career literature. Furthermore,with a few exceptions like Scott (2006), the career literature has barely impinged on the migration literature, especially thatconcerning refugees and asylum-seekers. This is because careers are most readily seen by migration scholars as applicable topeople with high human and social capital and familiarity with the culture(s) in which they operate. Despite the concern of manycareer scholars to define career in a way that is applicable to all, this is a difficult message to publicize, and it supports Blustein's(2006) preference for referring to working rather than career.

It was with this fragmentation in mind that we came together (Laurie Cohen and John Arnold from the career field and MaggieO'Neill from migration studies) in 2008 to organize the ‘Careers and Migration’ seminar series, upon which this symposium isbased. Supported by the United Kingdom's Economic and Social Research Council, this series aimed to critically evaluate theimplications of migration for careers, and the capacity of existing career research, theory and practice to reflect adequately

j.arnold@sheffield.ac.uk (J. Arnold), maggie.o'neill@durham.ac.uk (M. O'Neill).

All rights reserved.

322 L. Cohen et al. / Journal of Vocational Behavior 78 (2011) 321–324

migration phenomena and to ‘develop an agenda for how career theory, practice and research can contribute to howmigration isunderstood and managed, at individual, corporate and national levels. To realize these aims, we hosted a series of six seminarsbetween 2008 and 1010, focusing on different themes but with significant areas of thematic overlap. Because of our commitmentto bridging some of the disciplinary and occupational divides that persist in keeping the fields of career andmigration apart, and tofostering dialog and interaction, at every seminar participants and presenters were drawn from different groups: academics,practitioners (e.g. people working in the fields of career guidance and counseling, adult education, refugee advice and support),and policymakers and shapers. Participants came from all over theworld.While themajority was based in the UK, colleagues fromcontinental Europe and North America regularly attended, and less frequently delegates came from Australia and South America.

What happened over the course of the series was fascinating. On one hand, because each event focused on a different topic (eg.organizationally managed expatriate assignments; (re) establishing a career as a refugee or new citizen; career implications ofbusiness process migration), we continually discussed new and different ideas, theories and approaches. However, at the sametime, through the six seminars we began to build a repository of shared knowledge, knowledge which because it was subject tovigorous debate amongst people positioned very differently, started to elude traditional disciplinary and occupational boundaries.Although the participants varied to an extent from seminar to seminar, we nevertheless had a core group and it was interesting toobserve how as the series progressed participants drew not only on previous seminars, but also how they enlarged their ownspheres of experience, using others' perspectives and understandings to make their points.

This is not to suggest that we always agreed, or that by the end of the series we had reached a consensus. Far from it! Over thetwo years we covered a range of provocative topics, against a dynamic political and economic backdrop, and one of the featuresthat we think made the series successful was that participants were continually challenging, questioning and exploring. Withrespect to this shared repository of knowledge, then, what emerged was a number of key, permeating issues, but at the same timeissues over which the various perspectives clashed and grated. While the scope of this introduction does not allow for a detailedanalysis, in what follows we briefly describe some of these points.

First andmost generally, the series highlightedmigration as diverse and complex, takingmany different forms and styles andwitha wide range of triggers. Some of these (e.g. weekly and seasonal commuting) blur the boundaries between international andintranationalmoves (Hardill & Green, 2003; Collings, Scullion &Morley, 2007).While throughout the series the primary focuswas onindividuals and their careers, attentionwas also paid to organizational perspectives andwider national contexts and considerations. Itwas clear that the career literature attends to issues concerning the employing organization yet not to national or supranational (e.g.European Union) issues, while in the migration literature the reverse is true with a strong focus upon understanding transnationallabor migration as it relates to globalization, the high demand for labor in the North, migrant networks, constructing and negotiatingidentities and ‘the impact of migrant remittances on local economies and labor markets’ (Vertovec, 2001, p. 574).

With respect to organizations, the series revealed how individual and corporate goals frequently differ in the management ofinternational assignees, and these discrepancies are rarely recognized, let alone resolved. At the country level, while the careerliterature at best only gets as far as profiling countries in terms of their cultural norms (usually using Hofstede's typology), themigration literature is explicit about how government policies affect the work and other experiences of migrants (Sales, 2007;Rutter, Cooley, Reynolds & Sheldon, 2007). It also reflects sub-cultural differences, and the existence of political and othersubgroups with different views, thus escaping from the misleading impression that a country has a unitary culture.

Second, throughout the series the loss, recovery and reconstruction of career capital were depicted as pivotal in the experience ofmigration.While the career literature tends to focus on the accumulationof career capital through theactionsof purposeful individuals(Mayrhofer, Iellatchitch, Meyer, Steyrer, Schiffinger & Strunk, 2004; Doherty & Dickmann, 2009), the work of migration scholars hashighlighted, conversely, how individualsfind their career capital depleted anddevalued as theymove across national cultural borders,often as a result of issues beyond their control (Marfleet, 2006). To someextent this is even true of privilegedmanagerswhoare on theface of it beingwell looked-after by their employer. There is clear and consistent evidence for the under-use ofmanymigrants' skills inthe country theymove to (Rutter et al., 2007; Sales, 2007), and their concentration in low status occupations and low status branchesof higher status occupations. Nevertheless, vocational/career guidance practitioners and powerful sponsors who are members of thedominant culture canpotentiallyhelpmigrants overcomedisadvantage individually andpossibly (eventually) collectively. The formerhave a better chance than the latter of doing so in a way that truly breaks migrants' dependence on members of the host culture.

Third, closely linked to issues of career capital aremigrants' accounts of insecurity, security and their dynamic interplay. These issueshave featured in quite a limited way in the careers field (for example Feldman's (2006) work on contingent careers, and Ravishankar,Cohen and El-Sawad's (2010) on careers and offshoring) with its focus on the long view and its predisposition for work in the formallabor market. However, in the migration literature, these issues are much more prominent (Bloch, 2002; Wallace, 2002; Anderson,2001), and are linked to the short-term, erratic nature ofworkwhich characterizesmanymigrants' experiences. The seminars revealedhow perceptions of security and insecurity are related not only to financial matters, but also legal status, perceptions of inclusion andexclusion, and notions of future possibility, with respect to themigrants themselves as well as their families and communities (Flum,2001; Lister, 2008). Significantly, the salience of emotional dimensions, although frequently overlooked in both careers (Kidd, 2004)and migration literatures, was seen as contributing to migrants' perceptions of security and insecurity (O'Neill, 2009, 2010).

The fourth point we wish to highlight is the importance of relationships with family (in home and host countries), compatriotsand communities in migrants' career development (Blustein, Schultheiss & Flum, 2004). Here seminar participants' work onrelational perspectives on career highlighted the point that families and communities must not be seen simply as the contexts inwhich migrants enact their careers, but as central factors in this process. From this perspective work and career are not justvariables in a migrants' experience, but can also be seen as adaptive mechanisms in processes of acculturation with consequencesfor social inclusion and exclusion (Young & Valach, 2003; Lister, 2008; Waddington, 2007).

323L. Cohen et al. / Journal of Vocational Behavior 78 (2011) 321–324

Ourfinal point concernsmethodologies in researchandpractice.Our seminar serieshighlighted theappropriatenessof creative andnarrative approaches for researching and supporting people in unfamiliar environments (O'Neill & Harindranath, 2006). In particular,the extensive contributions of practitioner and policy-oriented colleagues throughout the series challenged some of the academicmethodological conventions and encouraged participants to think about how we go about our work in new and original ways.

Through this symposium our aim is to build on the learning from the seminar series and extend the debates beyond theseminar participants to a wider community of scholars and other interested parties. Consistent with our aim of fosteringinterdisciplinary dialog, we invited some of the seminar presenters, often working from different perspectives/sectors, to team upand write co-authored papers. This symposium was envisaged at the time, but it was made clear to authors that being invited wasnot by any means a guarantee of publication, and that all papers would be subject to careful review and would have to meetnormal, high JVB standards. In some cases, our “matchmaking” meant people who would certainly not otherwise have workedtogether, did so. We are very grateful to them for their willingness to take this on, and to work creatively through what wassometimes a challenging process. Part way through the time available for paper-writing, we held an authors' seminar atLoughborough University, UK, to share ideas and expectations. When papers came in, they were all reviewed by the three guesteditors, who offered extensive feedback. Some papers went through two rounds of this. In the end we are delighted to report thatall papers submitted appear in this symposium. This is a testament to the very good work by all authors, in some cases despiteformidable obstacles of one kind or another. We are immensely grateful to JVB editor Mark Savickas for his support in thisendeavor, and his trust in all involved in this process. We hope that this symposium justifies his faith, and reflects his owncreativity and wide vision in taking forward the field of vocational behavior.

Regarding the papers in this symposium, we would make the following introductory comments that will, we hope, orientatethe reader.

Bimrose and McNair (2011) consider the relationship between theory and practice in the provision of career guidance andsupport for migrants. Their core argument is that the phenomenon of migration poses a challenge to our conventional beliefsabout what career guidance is, its fundamental purposes, and how it is most effectively delivered. The challenge of providing aneffective service for migrants offers an opportunity to review some of the assumptions underlying career guidance practice. Careerguidance workers may experience conflict between government policy requirements and personal/professional values (forexample, the level of service, if any, to provide (i) asylum seekers, and (ii) illegal migrants), and at local level may construe this as achoice between upholding the nation state and empowering the powerless.

Developing approaches to career guidance and counseling on a more micro level, Schultheiss, Watts, Sterland and O'Neill take(2011) as their startingpoint the severe loss of career capital experiencedby forcedmigrants as theyfleeuntenable situations and seekto establish themselves in host countries where their legal and social positions are often precarious, and where they frequently findthat their previous experiences in work and career have little if any value. Drawing on a relational cultural paradigm (Schultheiss,2007) and a life design careermodel (Savickas, Nota, Rossier, Dauwalder, Duarte, Guichard, Soresi, Van Esbroeck &VanVianen, 2009),Schultheiss et al. introduce an innovative career intervention, the life cv, which two of the authors used with refugees and asylumseekers in the United Kingdom. They examine the implications of all this for vocational practice internationally.

Bornat, Henry and Raghuram (2011) focus on onemigrant community, South Asian doctors, who came to the UK in the middledecades of the 20th century and played a pioneering role in the new field of geriatric medicine. Denied access to high profilemedical specialties, South Asian migrant doctors (along with other marginalized groups) ‘fell into’ geriatrics, a ‘Cinderella’speciality which at the time lacked the status or prestige of other, more established disciplines. Using oral history interviewsconducted with the founding fathers of the geriatric field, and with South Asian geriatricians, their paper examines the paralleldevelopment of these individuals' careers, and also of the career of this medical speciality, highlighting the role of luck andserendipity and how these intersected with structural features, such as institutional racism, in this process.

Moving from individual migration to the migration of business processes, Zimmermann and Ravishankar (2011) consider theimplications of IT offshoring for employees. Based on data generated in a large, global German technology firm, they examine themultiple ways in which working within a collaborative offshoring arrangement has influenced the reconfiguration of German andIndian colleagues' professional identities and has led to on-going reassessment of their career aspirations and strategies. A centralissue emerging in their data is the increasing sense of insecurity which has resulted from the firm's disaggregation and thesignificant implications of this for individuals' sense of themselves and their career opportunities. This led to some defensivebehavior but also to some creative re-evaluation of what a professional role in engineering can look like.

While several of the contributions to the symposium focus on groups which are typically somewhat marginalized in the careerliterature, Collings, Doherty, Luethy and Osborn (2011) examine an aspect of migration that is much more evident withincontemporary career debates: company sponsored expatriate assignments. Synthesizing academic and practitioner perspectives andexperiences, Collings et al. examine how international assignees can be supported as individuals. This is a departure frommost of theliterature, which tends to focus on HR practices and treat international assignees as a homogeneous group. Challenging traditionaltemporal frames of reference, they draw on life span development approaches to argue for more inclusive support that not onlyextends beyond the boundaries of the assignment itself with respect to time, but that also acknowledges and respects assignees' otherlife roles (as partners, parents, sons and daughters, friends etc.) and recognizes their importance in the expatriation process.

Like Bornat et al., Flum and Cinamon (2011) focus on a single migrant group — Ethiopian Jews in Israel. The Beta Israelcommunity makes a fascinating case. Unlike many other migrants, Ethiopian Jews were actively encouraged to go to Israel and inmany cases were actually air-lifted there from camps in Sudan. However, having arrived andwith a right to legal citizenship status,there were marginalized from and stigmatized in many aspects of civil society, including work and career. Drawing on empiricalstudies of young Ethiopian migrants, Flum and Cinamon use concepts of citizenship, identity and family to explore how these

324 L. Cohen et al. / Journal of Vocational Behavior 78 (2011) 321–324

young people view their vocational futures, and whether the signs are that their disadvantage in the labor market will beovercome in the foreseeable future.

Marfleet and Blustein (2011) focus on the absence of attention to irregular or undocumented workers in the vocationalpsychology literature. They remedy this by mapping out a framework for understanding the “work-related challenges faced byirregularmigrants” that also seeks to address policy and practice in this area. In so doing they identify the key issues and challengesfaced by irregular migrants in the US and UK; draw upon a psychology-of-working framework (Blustein, 2006, 2008) referencingrelationships and community support as crucial to understand these challenges; and they conclude by identifying a researchagenda for vocational psychology linked to the development of humane policies on irregular migrants.

Collectively, these papers address a wide yet coherent range of phenomena related to migration and career. They are slightlyunusual relative tomost JVB papers in the senses that one ormore in this symposium get close to career/vocational guidance policyand practice, examine the progress of an occupation as well as individuals within it, treat vocational development as part ofpeople's holistic life situation rather than a discrete topic, and discuss socio-political aspects of people's vocational situations. Ourpapers cover the life-span, offer insights into how to design career development interventions for individuals, and take a much-needed broad view on how various individual, organizational, national and supra-national factors affect vocational adjustmentand adaptation. We hope that the symposium challenges traditional approaches and stimulates more research of similar kinds tothose demonstrated in the papers. We are confident that this would benefit not only migrants and those who support them, butalso vocational theory and practice in general.

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