The purpose of this research was to start to unpack migrant resilience at the individual level by studying professional migrants who have been identified as ‘successful’ in their adaptation and integration in Canada. This group of respondents comes from the Canadian Immigrant Awards database (winners from 2009 to 2017). With current descriptive/nomination data for 25 winners over the last 9 years, we hoped to achieve the following three goals: Understanding the multifaceted basis of what makes immigrants successful and worthy of the nomination; in depth exploration of stories of winners (through qualitative interviews), and finally a Survey of the Winners as well as additional group of migrant job seekers (comparison group of individuals currently in the coping phase) to understand indicators of success through quantitative method and to complement earlier qualitative phase.
What was our approach?
This research responded to the following questions: What makes an immigrant succeed in the local society? What kind of personality, social and societal factors may support this success? What is the role of other institutions involved in potentially helping to shape the labour market success of a migrant? How do personal vs. institutional factors interact in the context of migrant career success? These are all issues of current value for the settlement sector as well as policy makers.
- Summer 2017- Stage 1 (prep for Stage 2) – mainly exploration of existing data, understanding of pathways to success/ literature review and preparation of the interview protocol. In August 2017 first pilot interviews were conducted. The student was also learning about the literature on migrant integration as well as career success and resilience and exploring various measures of potential use in the survey at a later time.
- Fall 2017 – Stage 2 – In depth interview with 30-50 Canadian Award winners – As each interview was conducted our transcriber was doing transcription shortly after so that we could analyze some initial data during actual interview process. This helped to fine tune our interview protocol.
- Winter 2018 – Stage 2 (Analysis and planning of Stage 3): In this period the researchers and the PhD student were conducting in-depth analysis of the interviews and writing first reports. We also aimed to start writing the Academic paper #1 at the same time using both Stage 1 findings from the short bios of the winners and actual interviews. We also reflected on the research findings and the process and decide how to structure the Stage 3 (surveys of winners and job seekers).
Principal Investigators:
- Jelena Zikic, Associate Professor, Graduate Program Director School of HRM, York University jelenaz@yorku.ca
Co-investigators:
- Jeffrey Reitz, Professor, University of Toronto
- Roya Rashidi, PhD student, York U
Community Partners:
- Canadian Immigrant Magazine/RBC, in the second phase potentially other settlement agencies and immigrant groups (e.g., COSTI, AccessEmployment PINs)
