Skilled immigrant women's career trajectories during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada

PurposeDespite immigrant-receiving countries' need for skilled professionals to meet labour demands, research suggests that many skilled migrants undergo deskilling, downward career mobility, underemployment, unemployment and talent waste, finding themselves in low-skilled occupations that are not commensurate to their education and experience. Skilled immigrant women face additional gendered disadvantages, including a disproportionate domestic burden, interrupted careers and gender segmentation in occupations and organizations. This study explores how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic impacted skilled newcomer women's labour market outcomes and work experiences.Design/methodology/approachThe authors draw on 50 in-depth questionnaires with skilled women to elaborate on their work experiences during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.FindingsThe pandemic pushed skilled immigrant women towards unemployment, lower-skilled or less stable employment. Most study participants had their career trajectory delayed, interrupted or reversed due to layoffs, decreased job opportunities and increased domestic burden. The pandemic's gendered nature and the reliance on work-from-home arrangements and online job search heightened immigrant women's challenges due to limited social support and increased family responsibilities.Originality/valueThis paper adds to the conversation of increased integration challenges under pandemic conditions by contextualizing the pre-pandemic literature on immigrant work integration to the pandemic environment. Also, this paper contributes a better understanding of the gender dynamics informing the COVID-19 socio-economic climate.

The impact of intercultural communication competence on the career experiences of skilled immigrant managers in the greater Toronto area

"Guided by James Frideres’ model of integration and Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical approach to capital, this paper examines the factors that contributed to the upward mobility of some skilled immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area. An examination of the literature on the phenomenon of the “glass ceiling” reveals that skilled immigrants’ integration into the workplace is multidimensional, and cannot be achieved without the accumulation of different forms of capital necessary for advancement. The empirical research of this study captured the participants’ professional experiences that led them to develop an intercultural communication competence, which became a fundamental component to their career development. Based on this finding, I offer a new conceptual model of integration into the workplace that can be achieved through the accumulation of intercultural communication and identity forms of capital. The paper advances recommendations for an in-depth investigation of the impact of formal and informal training, in the host country, on skilled immigrants’ upward mobility. Keywords: Intercultural communication, career advancement, skilled immigrants, forms of capital, Greater Toronto area."

The impact of intercultural communication competence on the career experiences of skilled immigrant managers in the greater Toronto area

"Guided by James Frideres’ model of integration and Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical approach to capital, this paper examines the factors that contributed to the upward mobility of some skilled immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area. An examination of the literature on the phenomenon of the “glass ceiling” reveals that skilled immigrants’ integration into the workplace is multidimensional, and cannot be achieved without the accumulation of different forms of capital necessary for advancement. The empirical research of this study captured the participants’ professional experiences that led them to develop an intercultural communication competence, which became a fundamental component to their career development. Based on this finding, I offer a new conceptual model of integration into the workplace that can be achieved through the accumulation of intercultural communication and identity forms of capital. The paper advances recommendations for an in-depth investigation of the impact of formal and informal training, in the host country, on skilled immigrants’ upward mobility. Keywords: Intercultural communication, career advancement, skilled immigrants, forms of capital, Greater Toronto area."

How Does Immigration Affect Wages and the Unemployment Rate in Malaysia? A Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Approach

Malaysia had approximately 2 million migrants in 2018, and this number was increasing dramatically by 25 percent in 2019. Parallels with the aims of country policy to reduce migrant workers' dependency in 2020, managing the workers needs to be clarified. At the same time, the country still needs to keep them for specific sectors. These issues motivate us to analyze the migrant worker's requirements at different levels of skills and wages. Using Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modeling, at four-level nested CES production function, this study found high skilled migrants will harm wages for the high skilled and skilled groups while the opposite effect was observed for the semiskilled and low-skilled groups. However, when the migrant stock increases slightly below 1 percent, it will reduce the wages for semiskilled workers due to substitution effects. This study also found that the influx of low-skilled migrant workers will reduce salaries for semiskilled and low-skilled workers. The analysis also indicates that a small rise in high skilled immigrant labour will reduce the unemployment rate; likewise, increasing more than 4 percent will increase the unemployment rate. The results provide the policymaker guidelines to employ foreign workers' best skills to control the inequality of wages among skilled and low-skilled workers.

Examining the Impact of Legal Arizona Worker Act on Native Female Labor Supply in the United States

Low-skilled immigration has been argued to lower the price of services that are close substitutes for household production, reducing barriers for women to enter the labor market. Therefore, policies that reduce the number of low-skilled immigrants who work predominantly in low-skilled service occupations may have an unintended consequence of lowering women’s participation in the labor market. This article examines the labor supply impact of the Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA), which led to a large decline in the low-skilled immigrant workforce of the state. The analysis shows no evidence that LAWA statistically significantly affected US-born women’s labor supply in Arizona. This finding is partly explained by an increase in native workers in household service occupations due to LAWA, which offset the decline in immigrants in these occupations and caused the cost of household services to be relatively uninfluenced by the passage of LAWA.

Can skilled immigration raise innovation? Evidence from Canadian Cities

We examine the effect of changes in skilled-immigrant population shares in 98 Canadian cities on per capita patents. The Canadian case is of interest because its ‘points system’ is viewed as a model of skilled immigration policy. Our estimates suggest that the impact of increasing the university-educated immigrant share on patenting rates is modest at best and unambiguously smaller than the impact of skilled immigrants in the USA. We find larger effects of Canadian science, engineering, technology or mathematics (STEM)-educated immigrants employed in STEM jobs, but this impact is limited because only one-third of Canadian STEM-educated immigrants are employed in STEM jobs, compared with two-fifths of native-born Canadians and one-half of US immigrants. Our findings suggest that for most countries, skilled immigration is unlikely to be a panacea for sluggish innovation and that the US experience may be exceptional.