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Although the literature on the careers of skilled migrants is growing, relatively little is known about their experiences inside host country organizations. This article is a replication and an extension of a study by Zikic et al. (2010) on career challenges and coping strategies of skilled migrants. In contrast to the replicated study, where the focus was on the unemployed pool of talented migrants, in this study, the authors look at the career experiences of those who are already employed. Similar to the study of Zikic et al. (2010), the authors seek to explore how migrants understand their careers and what approaches they use to enact career opportunities from the perspective of “insiders” in local organizations.

The authors used a qualitative explorative approach. Based on 24 in-depth interviews with highly qualified specialists, who were hired for positions in Luxembourg corresponding to their professional profiles, the authors explore what challenges they face at the workplace and how they tackle them.

This research not only replicates the study of Zikic et al. (2010) but also extends the authors’ knowledge of the careers of skilled migrants in the context of local organizations. By focusing on employed skilled migrants, the authors open a “black box” of their career challenges and strategies and extend an earlier career typology (Zikic et al., 2010) into what happens within local organizations. In particular, this study identifies two major challenges that skilled migrants experience, namely, “trying to fit in” and “managing career mismatch”. Then, it shows three unique strategies that skilled migrants use to manage their careers. This allows us to cluster skilled migrants into three categories that the authors conceptualized, namely “workhorses”, “career rebels” and “career conformists”.

This study contributes to the literature on the careers of skilled migrants by theorizing the experiences of migrant careers after organizational entry. It also contributes to the talent management literature by providing nuanced insights into the challenges, strategies and profiles that this global talent has.

This paper aims to explore the stages and processes of work identity reconstruction following a major health-related career shock.

In-depth case study and interpretive phenomenological methods are used to allow for deep reflective self-analysis of post-career shock stages. The paper explores the identity processes and stages a Chief of Human Resources of a multinational firm experienced after being deprived from his main working abilities as a result of a brain stroke.

Post-shock work identity stages and processes are identified, as long as the importance of identity threat, liminality, identity internalization and relational recognition in the reconstruction process. The findings propose new coping responses that may allow individuals to escape a diminished work identity: identity shedding and identity implanting.

While career shocks play a significant role in career development, there is currently little understanding of how career shocks may affect individuals' work identity or sense of self, particularly over time. The paper provides a nuanced understanding of this phenomenon, through process data collected at several points in time over a period of 14 years.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how disadvantaged young adults construct a positive work-related identity in their transition from unemployment to employment, and what enables or constrains a successful transition.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 29 apprentices of a reemployment program (Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen). The qualitative data were complemented by data on participants’ reemployment status one year after the program ended.

Identity construction was not preceded by clear motives or “possible selves.” Rather, serendipitous events led to participation in the reemployment program, after which provisional selves seemed to emerge through different pathways. The data also suggested that disadvantaged young adults had to discard their old selves to consolidate their new identity.

A successful transition from unemployment to employment may require that old selves must be discarded before new selves can fully emerge. Given that our qualitative design limits the generalizability of the findings, the authors propose a process model that deserves further empirical examination.

A clear employment goal is not always required for the success of a reemployment intervention: interventions should rather focus on accommodating the emergence and consolidation of provisional selves. Yet, such programs can be simultaneously effective and unhelpful: especially group identification should be monitored.

Most research assumes that people are driven by specific goals when making a transition. The current study shows otherwise: the factors that enable or constrain a successful transition are not to be found in people’s goals, but rather in the process of identity construction itself.

Economic stressors such as job insecurity, job loss, unemployment, and underemployment cause severe difficulties for the workers affected, their families, organizations, and societies overall. Consequently, most past research has taken a thoroughly negative perspective on economic stress, addressing its diverse negative consequences and the ways that people try to cope with them. And even when following the advice provided by the scientific literature, people affected by economic stress will usually end up being off worse than they were before the onset of the stressor.

The current chapter pays credit to this perspective yet also tries to counterbalance it with an alternative one. While acknowledging the vast amount of literature outlining the negative consequences of economic stress on peoples’ well-being and careers, some literature also points at opportunities for a more positive perspective. More specifically, we argue that affected people can use a wide repertoire of behaviors for handling their current situation. Of particular promise in this regard is the concept of career adaptability, generally defined as the ability to change to fit into new career-related circumstances. Indeed, studies show that under certain conditions, career adaptability can facilitate people's search for not just any job but for a qualitatively better job, thus breaking through the spiral of losses usually associated with economic stress.

For the purpose of this argument, we link career adaptability to the concept of proactive coping, analyzing how and under which conditions career adaptability may present a contextualized form of proactive coping. We then address known personal and situational antecedents of career adaptability and show how career adaptability may be fostered and trained among different types of job seekers. We end this chapter with a discussion of open questions as well as directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine repatriate career exploration as a continuing growth‐oriented process and introduce repatriate hope as its crucial driver.

Through a review of relevant literature, the framework of hope theory is introduced to argue for a more “agentic” view of the repatriate that can act as an independent career agent in the increasingly boundaryless career environment.

The paper extends current knowledge of the repatriation process by describing ways in which repatriate hope drives career exploration toward valued outcomes of career growth and career success. It is also described how this repatriate career success will depend on the repatriate expectations and the social and organizational support received by the repatriate.

The main contribution of this paper is a new view of the repatriation process through the lens of the hope theory that emphasizes positive psychological perspective indicating career growth/success as a valued outcome of repatriate career exploration process. Thus, repatriate is viewed as a proactive individual managing his or her career success and using exploration as a means of coping with and adjusting to a shifting set of challenges presented by the dramatic role change.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the interplay between individual and organizational human capital investments may impact on immigrant career success

Analysis is based on the 2003 Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) in order to determine the impact of training (both self‐funded and employer‐sponsored) and other human resource practices (such as training expenditure per employee, membership of a team, and job rotation) on employee career outcomes. The most basic estimate is a linear function based on immigrant and non‐immigrant sub‐samples of the WES.

A positive relationship was found between employers' investment in training and development (as indicated by their training expenditure per employee), and objective career success indicators (wage and promotions) for non‐immigrants but not for immigrant professionals (IPs).

The topic is timely, given the growing need to explore the relationship between the existing labour shortages emerging under the forces of globalization and the talent flow of internationally mobile and experienced professionals. In particular, as organizations strive to become more global, their ability to integrate and leverage the international expertise, language knowledge, and networks that IPs bring with them is paramount.

The study is original and makes a unique contribution because it combines the individualistic and organizational perspectives concerning the stock and flow of human capital with regard to immigrant professionals. While most research to date has focused on the individualistic approach and on capital investments made by the immigrant, the study addresses the equally important organizational perspective.

This paper aims to examine perceived barriers and paths to success for Latin American immigrant professionals in the Canadian job market.

Findings are based on 20 semi‐structured interviews with Latin American graduates of Canadian MBA programs. Interviews were analyzed for emergent categories and common themes.

Despite their strong educational backgrounds, participants perceived several challenges to their success in the Canadian workplace, specifically, language barriers, lack of networks, cultural differences and discrimination. They also identified factors that influenced their professional success in Canada, such as homophilious networks and their Latin American background.

By investigating stories of Latin American immigrant professionals, the study explores subjective views of immigration experiences and discrimination in this unique and rarely examined group. A larger sample will increase the confidence of the study's findings and future studies should examine dynamics of these issues over time.

This paper presents insight onto the labor market experiences and coping mechanisms of the currently understudied group of Latin American immigrant professionals in Canada. The study's qualitative approach enabled the examination of challenges experienced by immigrant professionals beyond those typically studied in this literature (e.g. devaluation of foreign credentials) and led to the finding that being Latin American can act both as a disadvantage in the form of discrimination and as an advantage as it differentiates immigrant professionals from other job seekers.

This paper aims to examine the “darker side” of what it means to engage in an international academic career. Extending beyond well‐documented themes relating to the difficulties of cross‐cultural adjustment and unfulfilled expectations/opportunities for promotion, this paper seeks to introduce “transience and risk” as two important dimensions of this very specific career choice. The paper draws especially on the contemporary “new” careers literature, including conceptions of career exploration as a framework to understand the research findings.

The paper employs a qualitative methodology, drawing on semi‐structured interviews conducted in situ with 30 expatriate academics in four different countries.

Transience and risk were identified as two important dimensions of the “darker side” of pursuing an international academic career. However, these two dimensions also had further positive aspects, thus signalling the complex and often contradictory nature of this specific career form.

Introduces a more cautionary note to the contemporary literature on international careers and career exploration more generally.

Careers that evolve across international boundaries require support that extends beyond cross‐cultural training.

The paper contends that in as much as an international academic career offers a broad range of opportunities for fulfilment it also presents significant challenges that should be acknowledged.