Testing the Career Adjustment Model for Immigrant Women to Canada

According to the statistical data, immigrant women are less integrated into the Canadian labour market than immigrant men or Canadian-born women, even when accounted for years of education and work experience. Studies of immigrant women’s cross-cultural adjustment and labour market integration have been largely underestimated in the history of research on immigrants’ acculturation. This study explores the factors that contribute to a successful career adjustment of immigrant women in Canada. A comprehensive model of psychological, situational, and social factors designed by Rasouli et al. (2008) and revised by the author was tested on a sample of 101 immigrant women across Canada. Career adjustment was measured positively as job satisfaction and negatively as occupational stress. Career management self-efficacy, problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping, language self-efficacy, social support, personal income, work experience from Canada, and work experience from the country of origin predicted job satisfaction while emotion-focused coping, career management-self-efficacy, education attained in Canada, and parenthood predicted occupational stress. Career management self-efficacy and education obtained in Canada were in particularly strong predictors of those variables. Implications of the findings and future research directions are discussed