Examining Career Human Agency in Immigrant Professionals in Canada

This qualitative study is a secondary data analysis on interviews conducted on immigrant professionals to understand the adjustment and career-related challenges they face as part of the process of resettlement into the Canadian labour force. The main purpose of this study was to explore the effects of retraining outcomes and uncover factors that influence career human agency amongst immigrant professionals. It was discovered that most immigrant professionals have career aspirations and come to Canada to achieve these desired outcomes. Immigrant professionals often expect that they will be able to continue in their pre-Canadian vocational field in some capacity with minimal or no retraining. However, the reality is that certain contextual factors exist within Canada that serve as career barriers that prevent many immigrant professionals from reentering into their pre-Canadian professions. This includes discrimination, lack of social network, lack of local work knowledge, and non-recognition of foreign education and work experience. These barriers tend to lead to issues of unemployment, under-employment, unfair treatment, psychological distress, reduced quality of living, and negative impacts on their self-concept. Most immigrant professionals engaged in personal agentic actions as well as seek social support to cope and to overcome these difficulties. Encountering these career barriers often prompted immigrant professionals to engage in educational retraining as a self-directed career-management and career-enhancing strategy. The specific retraining experiences and career outcomes of participants were explored and discussed in detail within this study. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was employed to analyze transcripts of interviews. The essential themes of the participants’ shared experiences of career human agency were contrasted against Chen’s (2015) Career Human Agency Theory (CHAT) and the Protean and Boundaryless Career Orientation (PBCO) model (Briscoe, Henagan, Burton, Murphy, 2012). The study’s findings substantiated both the CHAT (Chen, 2015) and the PBCO (Briscoe et al., 2012) model for explaining the career development and career human agency of professional immigrants in adverse work environments. Lastly, a coherent map of the interaction and processes between internal and contextual factors, as well as with the four pillar principles of the CHAT (Chen, 2015) model was produced.Ed.D