The Price of the Conversion: From Professional Disqualification to Social Decommissioning in Migration

• In Event: 1184 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 19. Employment and Job Searching

Abstract

Through a qualitative study based on minute exploration of 34 detailed interviews among first generation migrants of Algerian origin in Québec. My study is trying to point out the various ways in which these migrants combine their multiple strategies to integrate the labor market. The study leads to the setting up of a “mapping” of the conversion how they experiment their professional disqualifications and points to the variety of the empirical ranges in labor market field. Four types come out: the opportunistic, the occupational, the contingent and the offering. This leads us to reconsider the difficulties for the qualified migrants to integrate into host society and to think about the real reason to induce them to negotiate their social decommissioning.
The people interviewed negotiate their situations strategically to fit with their origin and new benchmarks. The legitimacy is forced to advocate the acceptance of their disqualification in conversion. However, this typology can’t be understand stiffly, other orientations might emerged within different situations and the data of the migrants themselves. The interviews highlight the empirical strategies of negotiating their conversion face to professional disqualification to integrate into labor market within host society and the consequences as social decommissioning.

Author

• Ali Belaidi, Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Management