Untangling Space and Career Action: Migrant Career Recontextualization in the Host City

As many skilled migrants settle in global cities, we explore how physical and social embeddedness in the host city may predispose migrant career action and integration. We highlight the significance of migrants’ desire for spatial continuity and belongingness as the foundation for their career efforts. In crossing city boundaries, migrants interact and learn from host city artifacts; in this way, we illustrate both the facilitating as well as the constraining role of the host city on migrants’ ability to apply and translate their foreign career capital locally. Importantly, in this qualitative study we discover career recontextualization which embodies not only transfer but also translation and transformation of career knowledge from home to the host city context – through use of local boundary objects (e.g., city artifacts) as intermediaries. Career recontextualization is enacted via three unique types of career action: career orienting, cross-boundary career adaptation and creative career action (e.g., new boundary object creation). Thus, we extend boundary object theory to the city context and explore the role of transferring work-related knowledge as well as the ability to control and influence careers of newcomers. Finally, we provide a novel perspective on the intricate relationship between career recontextualization and migrant integration in the host city, leading to a discovery of two unique types of integration (functional and holistic).