3.1 Sensemakers and Sensemaking

When immigrants are confronted with a new environment, full of surprises and discrepancies, they engage in a process of intra-subjective sensemaking to construct meanings and engage in action. As we argued in Chapter 2, sensemaking starts with the sensemaker. In this chapter, we focus on the identity processes implicated in QIs’ work integration. We start with the self-narratives of Aldo and Ulan to understand their individual processes of identity construction and sensemaking.

Aldo and Ulan1 came from the Philippines five years before we spoke with them, making them recent immigrants at the time of our conversations. They were proficient in English and were trained in and worked as engineers in the Philippines. Aldo was a mechanical engineer, and Ulan was a chemical engineer. Before arriving in Canada, they participated in the same government-sponsored pre-arrival immigrant training program, during which they received information about living and working in Canada. Despite their similar educational background, professional attainments, and comparable language skills, their career trajectories developed quite differently (Aten et al., 2016).

Aldo had to submit a complete record of his professional credentials as part of his application to become a Canadian permanent resident. Yet, once he arrived in Canada, he was very frustrated and confused when he realized he had to do it ‘all over again,’ undergo a separate accreditation process, and provide further evidence of his training and skills to enter the local workforce. He was under the impression that his successful immigration application was sufficient acknowledgment and evidence that his status as a skilled worker positioned him well to meet the reported labor shortages in Canada. Instead, he felt pressure from immigrant support personnel to take on menial jobs that did not correspond to his education and previous experience. Faced with this dilemma, Aldo decided against pursuing professional accreditation because of the many costs involved (financial and emotional). Instead, he applied for and secured a job that he was overqualified for. He works as a machine operator in a warehouse, which is removed from his original specialization and qualification (engineering) and requires lower skills than he possesses (underemployment). He explained:

I have not started my examination program because I’m tied up with other things, providing with my job, providing food for the family… It takes you time and money to prepare for the examination, and I didn’t have the luxury and time to prepare… I’m working, and I’m supporting my family. I guess I just shut this off.

However, he still sees his immigration project as successful because he can focus on other aspects of his life. He reflects:

I’m a musician: I’m a pianist and a singer. I sing, and I play the piano at church… I have a lot of good friends here, maybe that helped me to develop my skills in relating…After five years, when we bought a house, I felt that I was with it. I’m seeing my children, my oldest son is now in university, and my daughter, my second kid, she is in college. Yeah, I’m so happy. Because that’s one of my purposes, not only my career here in Canada, but it’s for my children, and that they would have the best education that Canada can offer. Once you have graduated here in Canada, there will be a lot of jobs, a lot of choices, but back home, you have no choice. So, I’m happy with it, and I feel successful.

Like Aldo, Ulan also reported feeling confused about the expectations to position himself in the local workforce despite arriving as a skilled immigrant. He explains:

Back home, when we were approved for Canada, I was hearing stories that maybe 80 or 90 percent of immigrants in Canada would end in an odd job. Odd job? Is that so… When I arrived in Canada, they were not allowing you to work in your education; you have to upgrade yourself. And I thought, maybe I can make a difference, I was telling myself. And then, once I received the letter from the Canadian Embassy, I was invited to attend the [training program]. And one of the speakers said, you are all professionals, and I strongly believe that you can land in your field. He really told us that…. Odd job is not for you… and that boosted my self-confidence.

Ulan defied the odds and landed a job in his field, but it was not easy.

…. We arrived in Canada knowing nobody… not a single friend. We met people there, [and they would ask] do you need a job? I have an odd job in the kitchen or something like that… it is too early, thank you. I was so determined. Even when I looked at the ads, I only chose those ads that were related to my field. That’s why it took me seven months … I really picked the jobs that were in my field and that I thought I would excel in. I came looking for better opportunities for myself and my son… I knew it was not going to be easy, it would be hard, but I had confidence that I could make it…but for seven months, I didn’t have a job. I was really looking for a job that was related to my degree, to my work experience. I was so determined that I was going to get a job related to what I was doing back home. And it never crossed my mind that I would be doing an odd job. I guess that self-confidence that I can make it… The [training program] helped; they introduced me to [immigrant support program, and they] helped me to get my entry-level for the same company that I work for now.

Aldo and Ulan had many things in common. They arrived in Canada about the same time with similar educational and professional backgrounds. They needed to make sense of the disconnect between their successful admission to Canada as skilled immigrants based on their education and experience and their inability to secure work in their professional fields without further training and accreditation. They attended the same support program but extracted different cues. Aldo understood that it would be difficult to find work as an engineer, and he would have to accept working a low-skilled job as his immigration reality. On the other hand, Ulan inculcated a comment made by a trainer during a pre-arrival program to further reinforce his professional identity and find the confidence to persevere to find work in the occupation in which he had qualifications and experience. Not accepting underemployment as an immigration reality, Ulan stood firm and reforged his professional identity by looking for cues that supported his image as a competent professional. Just as Ulan saw his immigration project as successful, Aldo also emphasized his multifaceted contribution to the Canadian economy and society by discussing his various roles and personal identities. He is a professional but also a pianist, singer, and family man.

Ulan and Aldo identify as successful immigrants and, in retrospect, construct their professional identities in different ways. Aldo talks about himself as a successful immigrant and takes pride in making people happy and in playing a small part in his children’s success in entering tertiary education. Ulan also feels successful because he beat the odds to become a QI who could continue his professional career in a new country. In this chapter, we explore the central role of identity, specifically the process of identity work, in sensemaking and immigrant work integration.

3.2 Identity Work

Identity work is the process of ‘forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening, or revising [one’s] identities’ (Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010, p. 137). Identity refers to the ways in which individuals develop a sense of self by categorizing themselves as members of groups (e.g., I am a woman, a teacher, a scuba diver) and in relation to others (e.g., I am not a man, a soccer player, or an engineer) (Tajfel, 1974). Therefore, identity is a construct built from a self-view; individuals align who they are with their external environments, using forms of social classification. As such, identity is an intra-subjective process requiring continuous external validation. This process is relational; the social environment provides individuals with available identification categories that, in turn, reflect whether their identity claims are accepted (Randrianasolo, 2021).

Categories for social identification are endless, but some are more prominent than others, including gender, race, ethnicity, profession, and nationality. Immigrants contend with many challenges to their identity work in different societal contexts. For instance, different social environments may have different race categorizations. A South American of European descent may be considered ‘White’ in their country of origin but a ‘person of color’ in their country of immigration. These differences create challenges with respect to identity work.

Immigrants must also negotiate their national identity or identification with their country of origin and the country in which they intend to reside. Komisarof and Leong (2020) argue that the degree to which immigrants achieve a sense of belonging in a receiving community is closely tied to national identity. They add that a community is imagined and symbolic, in which individuals rely on a set of assumed shared characteristics or markers to decide who ‘is one of us’ and who is not. Interestingly, professional attainment has been recognized as a key marker of inclusion in a new country (discussed in Chapter 6) and, as such, a foundation for national identification (Leong, 2014; Moffitt et al., 2020).

3.2.1 Professional Identity and Work Integration

Professional integration in the new social environment of the receiving country requires QIs to revise their understanding of who they are in ways that bring a sense of coherence and distinctiveness (Brown, 2015) and maintain continuity between their past identity and who they are becoming (Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010). Identity work upon arrival in a new country needs to happen regardless of whether immigrants change occupations or remain in the same occupation they had before immigrating. When integrating as professionals in another country, immigrants need to restructure their identities to become somebody else (e.g., I used to be an engineer, now I sing and play the piano at the church) or to learn how to become a member of their original profession in the new social environment, a process Ulan referred to as the need to ‘upgrade yourself.’ Either process is challenging and lengthy, which explains why immigrant transition takes time.

Neiterman and Bourgeault (2015a) looked at the professional resocialization of internationally educated health professionals in Canada and found that integrating into a profession as newcomers requires understanding its universal and culturally specific aspects of practice. Professional identities are embedded within a cultural and ideological environment. When an individual engages in a profession for the first time, they need to acquire the knowledge and skills required to practice in their occupation, complemented by an understanding of the professional culture to develop an identity as a professional. Typically, this process happens through professional education. When an immigrant attempts to practice their profession in a new country, however, they must learn the local societal and professional cultures and unlearn assumptions, behaviors, and practices acquired in other professional environments that no longer resonate with the new cultural, social, and ideological environment.

QIs with several years of experience in an occupation might have to contend with significant differences in the new country’s professional culture and occupational practices, and adjust to different local practices, cultural norms, and role statuses. Neiterman and Bourgeault (2015b), in their study of nurses and physicians in Canada, observed that nurses trained in Canada are viewed as equal members of the healthcare team but have more subordinate status in other countries. The ways in which occupations are structured and how roles are defined can vary widely across different social environments, causing confusion and requiring a realignment of newcomers’ expectations and expectations of them in new workplaces. In addition, the cultural demands in the new social environment might require different communication styles and tools to perform the same role. These discrepancies in role definitions and expectations, Neiterman and Bourgeault (2015a) argue, mean that the process of professional integration should be seen as a transition that requires ‘new ways of practicing and learning a new set of skills, responsibilities, and professional relations’ (p. 80). Work integration is, therefore, a transition necessitating adjustment and adaptation. Old skills need to be combined with new skills, and older patterns of communication might need to be unlearned to accommodate new patterns.

The degree of challenge associated with resocialization varies across occupations. Some occupations are highly regulated and contextual (such as health care), while others have a strong international culture with a shared language across many nations (such as software programming). As a result, the process of identity work required of immigrants to present themselves as desirable workers (Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010) or employable (Smith, 2010) is likely to vary across occupational sectors and professions.

When individuals are being socialized into a new profession as entry-level or first-time workers, they acquire knowledge and skills while simultaneously constructing an identity. Immigrants, however, already have a professional identity, and at times, this identity holds great personal value and would have likely awarded them status in their previous social environments. Changing professional identities requires letting go of previous identifications, or as Ibarra (2004) says, becoming an ‘ex.’ Ibarra (2004) argues that the process of developing a new working identity is iterative and proceeds in several steps. Individuals ask themselves, ‘Who might I become?’, and then test possible selves, both old and new, in the new social environment. Next, they engage in external change by changing careers and internal change by achieving greater congruence between who they are and what they do. Finally, they update priorities, assumptions, and self-conceptions. She argues that such changes take much longer than we expect because one must ‘get rid of some of the old selves we are still dragging around and, unconsciously, still invested in becoming’ (p. 13). This is particularly true for immigrants who may engage in a new working identity, not by choice, but because they could not integrate into their preferred profession.

Ibarra (2004) further argues that a working identity is composed of three aspects: what we do, the company we keep (our working relationships), and the story that links who we have been and who we will become. Crafting a new identity, therefore, requires trying on different identities through experiments and forging new connections. This process can take several years; to become somebody else takes time, trial and error, and external and internal change. More importantly, this process is fraught with identity threats and is particularly challenging for immigrants who previously enjoyed high social status due to their professional identities and, after the disruption of immigration, must grieve what has been lost before making space for something new.

3.2.2 Coping with Identity Threats

Identity threats are challenges to one’s preferred identity narrative (Brown & Coupland, 2015). As QIs learn about barriers to employment and seek to maintain their preferred professional identities (e.g., as an engineer), these barriers can be perceived as threats to their deeply held identities; they need to find ways to cope and manage how others perceive them. When faced with such identity threats, individuals attempt to balance the need to present themselves as competent while also adjusting the presentation of their professional selves to align with a new work environment. In Neiterman and Bourgeault’s (2015a) study of foreign-trained healthcare professionals’ resocialization, they found that these professionals used two primary strategies to deal with identity threats. First, they minimized differences by emphasizing the similarities between professional practices in Canada and their home countries. Second, they asserted the superiority of their approach compared to the local system.

In our exploration of highly skilled refugees’ integration (Nardon et al., 2021), we found that when faced with barriers to professional integration that were perceived as threats to their professional identities, they were encouraged by career counselors to form a more ‘realistic’ understanding of their opportunities. Some refugees engaged in the process of recrafting a new identity, finding an alternative career, and focusing on other aspects of their selves (like Aldo). Others bracketed their situation as a temporary condition and expected to return to their careers in the future. A third group, however, refused to accept career counselors’ ‘reality’ that their career plans were not viable. These individuals were considering relocating to other countries if they were unable to integrate professionally.

Similar studies have been done in other national contexts, including the work of Zikic and colleagues (2010), who explored and compared the responses of QIs to employment barriers in Canada, France, and Spain. In this comparative study, they identified three main strategies employed by QIs to manage their careers. One group adopted an embracing strategy and saw contextual barriers as challenges to be overcome. This group framed their experiences as positive and emphasized their subjective evaluation of success. A second group took an adaptive strategy, focusing on ways to adapt to local labor market requirements. A third group took a resisting approach and remained attached to their old professional identity. This third group also saw the barriers in the new professional environment as insurmountable and felt discouraged. Altogether, these studies show that individuals vary in how they cope with barriers to integration and challenges to their professional identity. While some recreate themselves in the new environment and re-socialize in their professions or change professions, others maintain an attachment to their previous professional identity and find it difficult to integrate.

3.3 Intersecting Identities

Our discussion of identity threats has focused on professional identities; however, these identities do not exist in isolation but intersect with other identities. Intersectionality recognizes that people have simultaneous membership in multiple social categories (e.g., gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc.), which are intertwined in such a way that the experience of one social category is linked to their membership in other categories (Bendl et al., 2015). The concept was introduced into academic scholarship by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) to present the experiences of Black women. She believed Black women’s racial and gender identities inform each other to constitute their experiences. Patricia Hill Collins (1990) further popularized the concept of intersectionality with her discussion of the ‘matrix of domination,’ and the concept ultimately became an analytical and practical tool in scholarship, social justice activism, and is now a buzzword (Davis, 2008).

An intersectional perspective helps us see how the experiences of different groups of immigrants may vary based on the degrees of oppression and privilege associated with their specific social location, which can influence their identity formation. In his memoir, Randrianasolo (2021) explains how, as a Malagasy immigrant in the United States, his identity claims as an American and a Malagasy were not verified. While Americans saw him as a foreigner, people in Madagascar saw him as an American. These failures of self-verification contributed to his experiences of his identity being challenged.

In our previous work with Filipino engineers in Canada (Aten et al., 2016), we found that immigrants’ self-identifications varied; sometimes, they identified as immigrants, as mobile professionals, or, somewhere in the middle, as immigrant professionals. These different mobility frames influenced their willingness to take low-skilled jobs (underemployment) and their overall approach toward work integration. Immigrants who prioritized their professional identity focused on finding commensurate professional opportunities and even sought to move to another country if they could not realize their professional ambitions (like Ulan). Those who adopted a migrant identity focused on adapting to Canada and were consequently willing to adjust to their perceived reality of limited opportunities as foreign professionals (like Aldo). Those using a migrant professional frame attempted to find a compromise, reconstructing their careers in ways that balanced their social and professional needs.

The ‘immigrant’ identity is even more pertinent for those QIs whose immigration was not professionally motivated, like refugees. For instance, Mozetič (2018) explored the identity narratives of highly skilled refugees trained in the medical profession who were settling in Sweden. In this study, Mozetič (2018) found that the ‘refugee’ label was perceived negatively in the host society. This negative perception of their refugee identity overtook any perceptions of their professional identity as doctors and placed them at a professional disadvantage vis-à-vis local physicians and even other immigrants. However, compared to refugees in other fields of work, they gained a competitive edge because of their professional identities as doctors.

Not only are individual identities shaped by dimensions of difference, but so are professional and workplace cultures. These differences become normalized through images, rules, and values that may be both implicit and explicit. Dorothy E. Smith, in her influential book The Everyday World as a Problematic (1987), referred to these as relations of ruling, which may be abstract, rational, impersonal, objective, and neutral. Still, in practice, they conceal important and persistent social divisions (including gender, racial/ethnic, class, age, disability, and so on). These substructures are maintained through various practices, including structural arrangements, allocation of personnel, identity construction of workers, and organizational culture (Acker, 1990; Benschop & Doorewaard, 1998). Moreover, these practices draw on a larger cultural context where dominant identities (masculine, White, upper-class, younger, able-bodied, etc.) are materially and ideologically privileged. This privilege is maintained by the dual mechanisms of organizational practices and individual workers’ performances.

In their study of internationally educated nurses and medical graduates in Canada, Neiterman and Bourgeault (2015b) found that instances of discrimination varied among physicians and nurses. The gendered and racialized status of the profession can ‘serve as a shield of protection from experiences of discrimination’; as a result, nurses encountered more instances of and more complex discriminatory experiences than physicians. Alternatively, in our previous study of information technology (IT) workers of Indian origin in Canada (Hari, 2013), we found that India’s global reputation as a leader in trade-in software services and the stereotypical association of Indian nationals with technology work provided Indian QIs entering the Canadian IT sector a competitive edge in circumventing the Canadian work experience barrier to work integration. The influence of intersectional identities on both workers and professions is an important reminder that identity work is a social process that is continuously in flux and dependent on context.

3.3.1 Identity Processes Are Social and Ongoing

Identity is relational—it is constituted of what we see in ourselves and what we want others to see in us. We project our identity onto an environment through our language, behaviors, gestures, attire, and associations. The environment reflects our identity back to us, and in this way, we see which elements of our identity are most salient. Organizations and individuals in a position of power and dominance privilege some identities over others and dictate what is meaningful in different social situations (Helms Mills et al., 2010). Thus, identity is a social process subject to power discrepancies.

While immigrants may see themselves as professionals, their identity claims need to be validated by others. As we will see in later chapters, individuals in a position to guide, advise, or hire immigrants will respond to their identity claims positively or negatively and, in effect, reinforce their self-image as professionals (as Ulan reported) or encourage them to accept deskilling and/or underemployment (like Aldo) (see Chapter 4). Organizations also play an important role in the social process of constructing professional identities by deciding who is accredited or hired (see Chapter 5). Furthermore, sensemaking and identity constructions are also influenced by societal narratives that dictate who is a ‘good immigrant’ and who gets to become a member of society (Moffitt et al., 2020) (see Chapter 6).

3.4 Practical Insights

As discussed above, the company we keep is an important component of identity. To adopt a specific professional identity, our qualifications, skills, and social and cultural capital must be recognized as legitimate for the professional field we are seeking to enter in a new context. A QI needs to become a part of the ‘right’ group and be recognized as a legitimate group member. Thus, professional connections are critical to identity reconstruction, which can be acquired and enhanced through support programs. QIs must immerse themselves in their chosen occupation right after immigrating. This allows them to gain exposure to their new professional environment and acquire the appropriate social and cultural capital in addition to the skills and qualifications they already possess. This early and immediate exposure to their chosen occupation is critical to ‘becoming a professional.’ Programs focused on short-term employment regardless of the occupational environment likely compromise QIs’ work integration efforts and decrease their opportunities to develop relevant social and professional networks, experience, and exposure to the ways of being and working in the desired profession.

Even if focused on the short term, immigrants’ career decisions are likely to have a long-term impact on their work integration, as they influence their ability to build the social and cultural capital required for their preferred career (Smith, 2010). Like Aldo and Ulan, QIs make sense of their career choices and make decisions that influence their future career options. Despite the structures that impede their work integration, QIs are agentic actors. QIs exercise agency as they work out processes for entering labor markets and making and unmaking their professional identities in the context of different workplace cultures, practices, and expectations. Aldo created alternative narratives of success as a family man and member of the community. Ulan resisted notions of immigrants’ disadvantage in the Canadian labor market and used it to motivate him to reconstruct his professional identity and successfully find commensurate employment.

3.5 The Road Ahead

In this chapter, we argued that immigrant work integration is a process of sensemaking deeply grounded in identity work. Making sense of the external environment occurs in the context of individuals’ efforts at identity construction (Brown et al., 2008); this process is influenced by the complex and intersectional identities of individuals, as well as the practices and expectations of specific professions. The identity work involved in sensemaking has important implications for QIs and those who interact with them. When we acknowledge that the processes of sensemaking and identity construction are intertwined, we gain a deeper appreciation for the time it takes to adjust and integrate into a new social environment after immigrating. Identity work is complex, social, and ongoing; however, immigrant support programs are often oriented toward short-term gains (finding immediate work opportunities) at the expense of the longer-term project of reforging professional identities in the receiving country. This short-term orientation includes expectations imposed on QIs to ‘hit the ground running’ and be fully integrated as quickly as possible. This undue pressure can be deceiving and damaging for QIs, as it corrodes individuals’ self-confidence and pushes them to engage in work to survive rather than advancing their career goals.

Every interaction can influence what immigrants think of themselves, the career opportunities they believe are available to them, and the actions they take. Individual sensemaking and identity work are interactive and informed by trial and error. Immigrants try out different selves and explore these varied options with others. They use others’ responses to engage in further sensemaking and identity construction. In the next chapter, we explore the important role of interactions with individuals in the local environment in facilitating sensemaking and work integration.

3.6 Key Points

  • Sensemaking starts with the sensemaker. QIs’ process of sensemaking of the new professional environment influences and is influenced by their understanding of themselves.

  • Identity refers to how individuals categorize themselves in relation to others. The environment provides the categories available for identification and validates (or not) individuals’ identity claims.

  • To integrate professionally, QIs need to engage in identity work—a process of revising their identities to incorporate a new professional identity or revise their identity based on local professional expectations.

  • Professional identities intersect and intertwine with other identities such as gender, race, nationality, class, and ability. As such, identity work is constantly in flux and is dependent on context.

  • Identity construction is a social process and is influenced by other individuals, organizations, and society.

Note

  1. 1.

    We spoke with Aldo and Ulan as part of a project exploring the experiences of Filipino engineers who migrated to Canada (Aten et al., 2016). These interviews reveal their individual process of making sense of themselves. Their discussion of career options is illustrative of individual processes of sensemaking regardless of contextual changes over time.