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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe challenges to ethnic minorities in the UK. While the experiences of migrants are both complex and varied depending on individuals' social class, race, cultural proximity to the host country and acculturation levels, more in-depth studies are necessary to fully understand how COVID-19 affects specific migrant groups and their health. Taiwanese migrants were selected because they are an understudied group. Also, there were widespread differences in pandemic management between the UK and Taiwan, making this group an ideal case for understanding how their acculturation journey can be disrupted by a crisis.

Qualitative data were collected at two different time points, at the start of the UK pandemic (March/April 2020) and six months on (October/November 2020), to explore migrant coping experiences over time. Theoretically, the authors apply acculturation theory through the lens of coping, while discussing health-consumption practices, as empirical evidence.

Before the outbreak of the pandemic, participants worked hard to achieve high levels of integration in the UK. The pandemic changed this; participants faced unexpected changes in the UK’s sociocultural structures. They were forced to exercise the layered and complex “coping with coping” in a hostile host environment that signalled their new marginalised status. They faced impossible choices, from catching a life-threatening disease to being seen as overly cautious. Such experience, over time, challenged their integration to the host country, resulting in a loss of faith in the UK’s health system, consequently increasing separation from the host culture and society.

It is important to note that the Taiwanese sample recruited through Facebook community groups is biased and has a high level of homogeneity. These participants were well-integrated, middle-class migrants who were highly educated, relatively resourceful and active on social media. More studies are needed to fully understand the impact on well-being and acculturation of migrants from different cultural, contextual and social backgrounds. This being the case, the authors can speculate that migrants with less resource are likely to have found the pandemic experience even more challenging. More studies are needed to fully understand migrant experience from different backgrounds.

Public health policymakers are advised to dedicate more resources to understand migrants' experiences in the host country. In particular, this paper has shown how separation, especially if embraced temporarily, is not necessarily a negative outcome to be corrected with specific policies. It can be strategically adopted by migrants as a way of defending their health and well-being from an increasingly hostile environment. Migrants' home country experience provides vicarious learning opportunities to acquire good practices. Their voices should be encouraged rather than in favour of a surprising orthodox and rather singular approach in the discussion of public health management.

The paper has clear public health policy implications. Firstly, public health policymakers are advised to dedicate more resources to understand migrants' experiences in the host country. Acknowledging migrants' voice is a critical first step to contribute to the development of a fair and inclusive society. Secondly, to retain skilful migrants and avoid a future brain-drain, policymakers are advised to advance existing infrastructure to provide more incentives to support and retain migrant talents in the post-pandemic recovery phase.

This paper reveals how a group of previously well-integrated migrants had to exercise “coping with coping” during the COVID crisis. This experience, over time, challenged their integration to the host country, resulting in a loss of faith in the UK’s health system, consequently increasing separation from the host culture and society. It contributes to the understanding of acculturation by showing how a such crisis can significantly disrupt migrants' acculturation journey, challenging them to re-acculturate and reconsider their identity stance. It shows how separation was indeed a good option for migrants for protecting their well-being from a newly hostile host environment.

This study used phenomenological narrative methodology to get insights into lived experiences of 10 Asian immigrant woman scholars in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in US institutions of higher learning. A feminist research approach overall guided the study. The concepts and theories of intersectionality, cultures of the academy, mindset, and mind tools framed the examination of the impacts of gender and work–family–community environments on the career pipeline of this group of women. The data were from two sources: (1) 48 documents on the participants and their institutions and (2) in-depth semi-structured interviews with these 10 participants. The findings show that gender and environment impacted the Asian women scholars’ career pipeline and advancement differently. On the negative side, barriers separately or jointly rooted in gender-based, racial, and hierarchical biases at stages of their career pipeline, from professional education to faculty appointment and leadership, challenged them. On the positive side, other gender-based and environmental agents and interventions supported them to overcome obstacles to their upward career mobility. This chapter has implications for how higher education institutions can improve their gender-based and environmental policies and praxis and facilitate the advancement of Asian immigrant women in STEM. It also has implications for how Asian women can prepare themselves to be successful in academic STEM careers.

This study investigates the antecedents of career initiative, a proactive behavior, whereby individuals engage in activities to promote their career development. The authors first argue that organizational tenure – the length of time employed within a specific organization – will exhibit a curvilinear or inverted-U-shaped relationship with career initiative. In the early years of an employment relationship, career initiative gradually increases as employees overcome the initial challenges of joining a new organization. However, career initiative will plateau and eventually decline as employees struggle to envision further development.

This study uses a survey design with data collected from the North American operations of a large global telecommunications company.

This study identifies two key mechanisms, both concerning relational context, that drive the curvilinear relationship between organizational tenure and career initiative: mentoring and barriers to networking. Specifically, increased mentoring and reduced barriers to networking both significantly weaken the curvilinear effect.

The results suggest that organizations can promote proactive behaviors through employee mentoring and by removing network barriers, particularly for those most at risk for reduced career initiative: early- and especially later-tenure employees.

Career initiative is a valued behavior among employees, but individual-level phenomena can be fostered, or inhibited, by relational context. So, while some scholars have found a trend toward “boundaryless” careers, this study reveals the importance of considering how the boundaries and social context within organizations can create an environment in which employee proactivity can flourish.

Although there is a growing body of work on immigrants' information behavior, little is known about the pre-arrival information experiences of immigrants who consult formal information sources such as immigration agents. Drawn from a larger study on the information behavior of immigrants, this paper mainly reports the semi-structured interview findings on the pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants who used formal information sources with discussion on how that affected their post-arrival settlement into Canada.

The study used a mixed method approach with semi-structured interviews (n = 60) and surveys (n = 205) with participants who arrived in Canada between the years of 1971 and 2017. Data were collected from May 2017 to February 2018.

Although the overall scope of the original study is much larger, this paper features findings on the pre-arrival information experiences derived mainly from an analysis of interview data. This study provides insights into the pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants consulting formal information sources such as immigration firms, individual immigration consultants and more formal government agencies. The author introduces a new concept of “information crafting” by exploring the negative consequences of selective information sharing by immigration consultants/agents in newcomers' settlements in Canada, primarily positive information about life in Canada, sometimes with exaggeration and falsification. The interview participants shared story after the story of the settlement challenges they faced after arriving in Canada and how the expectations they built through the information received from immigration consultants and government agencies did not match after arrival. This study emphasizes the importance of providing comprehensive information about life in Canada to potential newcomers so that they can make informed decisions even before they apply.

The findings of this study have theoretical and practical implications for policy and research. This study provides insights into the complicated culturally situated pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants. Moreover, the study findings encourage researchers in various disciplines, including psychology, migration studies and geography, to delve more deeply into newcomers' information experiences using an informational lens to examine the information newcomers receive from diverse sources and their effects on their post-arrival settlement in a new country. The study challenges the general assumptions that formal information sources are always reputable, useful, and comprehensive, and it provides some future directions for research that seeks to understand the culturally situated information behavior of diverse immigrant groups.