TY - JOUR
T1 - A ‘career shift’?
T2 - Bounded agency in migrant employment pathways in the aged care and early childhood education and care sectors in Australia
AU - Hamilton, Myra
AU - Hill, Elizabeth
AU - Adamson, Elizabeth
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper emerges from research funded by the Australian Research Council DP160100175, Markets, Migration and the Work of Care in Australia and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership grant number 895-2012-1021, Gender, Migration and the Work of Care. The authors would like to thank the rest of the project team Deborah Brennan, Sara Charlesworth, and Jenny Malone for their comments and suggestions on drafts and their wider contribution to the project. We would also like to acknowledge Isabel Shutes and Chris F Wright for the time they took to provide extremely useful feedback on an earlier draft. We would like to acknowledge the research partners who supported us to recruit the participants for the study, and especially the participants themselves for their time and generosity in sharing their experiences with us.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021/11
Y1 - 2021/11
N2 - Unlike many countries in Europe and North America, Australia does not directly recruit migrants to work in frontline aged care and early childhood education and care (ECEC). However, employment data shows that a large proportion of people working in these two care sectors are migrants. Little is known about how migrants make their way into the ECEC and aged care sectors in Australia. Drawing on qualitative interviews with migrants working in three cities, this paper explores the pathways of migrants into care work in Australia. It uses the concept of bounded agency to illustrate how migrants articulate agency within constrained employment opportunities. It finds that participants experience a heavily constrained sense of agency upon arrival in Australia due to lack of skills recognition and English language proficiency. Our data shows that, over time, participants mobilise existing resources–and acquire new ones–to develop new frames for action that culminate in what they describe as a ‘career shift’ into employment in formal care settings. Our data sheds new light on the way in which migrant care workers, through this process, are able to negotiate a sense of agency and pursue employment preferences, within a context of constraint.
AB - Unlike many countries in Europe and North America, Australia does not directly recruit migrants to work in frontline aged care and early childhood education and care (ECEC). However, employment data shows that a large proportion of people working in these two care sectors are migrants. Little is known about how migrants make their way into the ECEC and aged care sectors in Australia. Drawing on qualitative interviews with migrants working in three cities, this paper explores the pathways of migrants into care work in Australia. It uses the concept of bounded agency to illustrate how migrants articulate agency within constrained employment opportunities. It finds that participants experience a heavily constrained sense of agency upon arrival in Australia due to lack of skills recognition and English language proficiency. Our data shows that, over time, participants mobilise existing resources–and acquire new ones–to develop new frames for action that culminate in what they describe as a ‘career shift’ into employment in formal care settings. Our data sheds new light on the way in which migrant care workers, through this process, are able to negotiate a sense of agency and pursue employment preferences, within a context of constraint.
KW - aged care
KW - Australia
KW - Care worker
KW - early childhood education and care
KW - migrant
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074981612&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/1369183X.2019.1684246
DO - 10.1080/1369183X.2019.1684246
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85074981612
VL - 47
SP - 3059
EP - 3079
JO - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
JF - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
SN - 0047-9586
IS - 13
ER -