Making Sense of Foreign Contexts: Skilled Migrants' Perceptions of Contextual Barriers and Career Options

Abstract

This study amplifies understanding of the occupational marginalization of skilled migrants by elaborating the role of cognition in skilled migrants’ perception of contextual barriers and career options. Our qualitative analysis of interviews with thirteen Filipino engineers who migrated to Canada revealed that migrants’ perceptions are influenced by their mobility frames. We identified three cognitive mobility frames: migrant, migrant professional, and mobile professional. We found that migrants accessed local interpretations of contextual barriers through interactions in the situational context and that migrants’ mobility frames focused their attention on particular individual resources and characteristics of context, suggesting potential career options.