Skilled Migrants' Relocation Decisions and Resettlement Processes: The Embedded Role of Emotional Labour

Abstract

International mobility of skilled migrants involves their agency in shaping their social, cultural, economic, and symbolic capitals. This research emphasises the rationality embedded in skilled migrants’ migration decisions. However it ignores the outcomes of these seemingly agentic decisions being informed by the migrant’s emotional responses to their experiences of foreignness. When the migrants’ foreignness is a liability and their skills are devalued, resettlement processes including gaining skilled employment becomes challenging which makes resettlement an emotionally experienced phenomena. This research involved gaining insight into the subjective experiences of 23 skilled immigrants from regions including Africa, Asia, and Europe by means of exploring their experiences of coming to, settling in and finding skilled employment in New Zealand. Grounded theory methodology was employed to analyse the interview data, which signified a variety of emotional struggles that were commonly experienced. Emotional dissonance and emotional labour emerged as the core categories. Our findings move beyond the current literature on workplace emotional labour to immigrants’ coping strategies for gaining employment.