Open Collections

Della-Rossa, Irina

University of British Columbia

Thousands of immigrants arrive to Canada every year and women comprise a large proportion of that population. These women are contributing to the country’s population growth, the growth of the economy and the changes in the labour market. However, immigrant women, face many challenges upon their arrival. One such challenge is employment. The existing literature describes well how skilled immigrant women are affected by such challenges and are forced to either change their careers or give them up all together. However, there is some evidence that some immigrants have been successful throughout these transitions and very few studies address how women-immigrants handle these transitions. Especially scarce is the research on women-immigrants who decided to change their careers later in their lives, at times when women experience other physiological and psychological challenges. Given the paucity of research focusing on the positive experiences of women, the purpose of this research was to explore factors that helped or hindered skilled middle-aged Eastern European women-immigrants’ experiences in their career transition in Canada. Using the Enhanced Critical Incident Technique (ECIT) 12 women-immigrants who underwent a career change in their mid-life and identified themselves as doing well were interviewed. The interviews were further analyzed to identify 1) factors that helped them in that transition, 2) factors that hindered their experiences, and 3) factors that would have been helpful to do well with changes that these women did not have at the time of the change (wish list items). The results of the study indicated that multifaceted support system from various sources, including financial assistance, and information and familiarity with resources of help were major contributors to successful change for these women. This study also reveals that personality traits play an important role in successfully managing career transitions, with various characteristics identified as key contributors to success. The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge about skilled immigrant women and career change at mid-life, suggest further research, and help counsellors to support mid-life women by offering ways of handling the challenges of career transition and suggest interventions to address these issues.

Text

2024-08-27

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89033

Counselling Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/