Pembea kazi (career seesaw) for Kenyan Asians in Australia : capital mobilisation in skilled migrants’ career experiences

Skilled migrants are a valuable form of labour vital to the economic growth of many Western industrialised nations, including Australia. The dominant perspective in the research scholarship has been to understand the experiences of skilled migrants using the human capital approach that views them as economic agents. This perspective ignores the importance of other capitals implicated in skilled migrants’ career experiences. Bourdieu’s (1986) construct of capitals and his earlier work in Algeria is utilised in this study revealing insights that strongly suggest skilled migrant career experiences are complex and need to be understood more holistically. Bourdieu’s construct of capitals comprises different capitals such as economic, cultural and social capital. His theoretical framework contains challenges to understanding and application; as Wacquant (1992, p. xiv) says, Bourdieu invites researchers to ‘think with and against Bourdieu’. This thesis takes up that invitation. The thesis addresses the question of deployment of capitals by skilled migrants in their career experiences. To address this question and to explore Bourdieu’s theory of capitals, thirty people of Kenyan Asian origin, who migrated to Australia, were interviewed. The original emphasis on capitals in the research question was rebalanced to give requisite consideration of the importance of field and habitus in career experiences of the Kenyan Asians. Although the conceptual framework of capitals, field and habitus is the subject of ongoing debate, analytical insights are enhanced with the inclusion of field and habitus affording an examination of career experiences at a relational level. Studying field and habitus alongside capitals allows for recognition of ongoing exogenous change and the interaction between the individual and the external environment. In terms of field, the history of Kenyan Asians under British colonial rule and then during Kenya’s independence (characterised by Africanisation policies) is described and analysed. The study of a skilled migrant minority particularly from a developing country to a developed country is interesting because their experiences reveal how it is possible to transcend the perception of disadvantage as the ‘Other’ in the country of origin and the ‘double Other’ in a developed nation. Seldom stressed in the research on skilled migrant minorities, has been the influence of colonialism and post-colonialism as part of their lived experiences, the acquisition of cultural capital in the form of the language of the coloniser as well as the overall impact of the colonial project. Thus, the field represents the site of struggles where minority groups tend to be marginalised because of race and other factors. Field is also a site where skilled migrants in the context of their career experiences in developed nations can encounter numerous barriers that devalue their capitals. This thesis examines Bourdieu’s three constructs and integrates this with other research on skilled migrants and career. It applies a qualitative framework that comprises primary data obtained through in-depth interviews with Kenyan Asians. The participants arrived in Australia between 1964 and 2016 as skilled migrants under Australia’s skilled migration program. An analysis of their narratives revealed stories of discovery, adventure and hope as they embraced the opportunities Australia offered. Many strengthened their capitals through further development and engaged in other career fulfilling experiences. As they articulated and shared their individual stories, there was a sense that they were not the subalterns but active players in their quest to achieve success in their career experiences. There was a belief in the strength of their capitals coupled with a desire to succeed. These rich stories also invoked a feeling of ‘common wounds’, which together with potentials and limitations of this research are discussed in the methodology chapter. The data collected was organised according to themes and coded to draw out these diverse career experiences. The qualitative framework has enabled the hitherto ‘silenced voices’ to be heard. The findings indicated that integrating the concepts of capitals, field and habitus promoted a greater understanding of individual career experiences. For the majority of the participants, their pre-migration capitals were ‘treasures’ valued in Australia and effectively used in career experiences that were essentially stable within organisational settings. However, other themes emerged from the findings. One theme relates to the aspirational view of career and whether this is a sustainable aspiration in the twenty-first century. Linked with this theme is the nexus between economic capital and paid employment. The findings do underscore the importance of specific cultural capital accumulation by the once colonised when looked at from the historical perspective. Another theme was the ability to reframe challenges that can be characterised as ‘moxie’, a quality that appears to align well with current conditions in the labour market. This seemed especially true around career disruptions. In diverging from Bourdieu’s definition of habitus, this thesis extends knowledge about agentic responses to structural impediments in the labour markets. The reactions by the participants in this study show these are not static and pre-determined by the habitus operating at the sub-conscious level. Instead, these indicate levels of active strategising and displays of resilience and self-efficacy. These qualities are significant for discussions around a rusted concept of career in the world of work where there is ongoing unpredictability and disparate pressures for change. In discussing the achievements of the participants, this thesis challenges the automatic presumption that skilled migrants are disadvantaged. The career experiences of the skilled migrants in this study were not the stories of ‘dupes’ who subscribed to a narrative of disadvantage as the ‘Other’ or even the double ‘Other’. These accounts suggest the skilled migrants’ in this study were adept at balancing the Western notion of career without a corresponding loss of cultural identity. Rather than experiencing a sense of displacement or in their new host country, they were like the ‘fish in water’. This thesis makes a significant contribution to the growing calls to include all of Bourdieu’s concepts in studying social phenomena because it is rare to find studies that incorporate the three concepts. The act of thinking with Bourdieu means to think at a relational level, an aspect considered essential to his concepts. This thesis’ contribution to knowledge points to the need for migration policy to be sensitive and more transparent around the challenges facing skilled migrants in developed nations. Additionally, human resource professionals should be more mindful of the richness and diversity of experiences that skilled migrants possess and the paths these skilled migrants have traversed to make Australia home