Carleton University
Institutional Repository

The Carleton University Institutional Repository collects, preserves, and provides access to materials related to research, teaching, and learning at Carleton University.

The CURVE community provides access to open access and creative works by Carleton authors and researchers and is the official repository for Carleton theses and dissertations. Learn more

Browse Communities and Collections

Select a community to browse its collections.

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Archives and Special Collections  48
    Carleton University Library Archives & Special Collections (ASC)
  • CURVE  17829
    Research and creative works by Carleton authors and researchers and the official repository for Carleton theses and dissertations
  • Digital Collections  3294
    Digital collections maintained by Carleton University Library for research, teaching, and learning

Recent Submissions

  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Identity work in refugee workforce integration – The role of newcomer support organizations
    (Sage Publications, 2021-12) Nardon, Luciara; Zhang, Hui; Szkudlarek, Betina; Gulanowski, Daniel
    How does professional employment support provided by newcomer support organizations (NSOs) influence highly-skilled refugees’ professional identities and workforce integration? To answer this question, we draw on interviews with 25 managers and staff of NSOs in Canada and 11 recently arrived, highly-skilled refugees. We contribute to the literature on refugee workforce integration by shedding light on the dynamic process of employment support in which NSOs engage in sensegiving practices and influence refugees’ understanding of career options, assessment of opportunities, and their professional identity responses. We found that NSOs attempted to manage refugees’ expectations of career opportunities while fostering hope for the future and that refugees reacted to NSOs’ sensegiving practices by resisting expectation management messages, recrafting a new identity, or bracketing the present as transitory. We highlight the role of external agents in sensemaking and identity work by exploring work role transitions caused by forced migration. Furthermore, we uncover the dynamics of power and contextual constraints that influence sensegiving interactions. From a practical point of view, we argue that in the absence of quality employment opportunities, the reliance on refugees’ resilience and their motivation for long-term professional integration may further marginalize them.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Doubly Precarious Immigrant Academics: Professional Identities and Work Integration of a High-skilled Precariat in Canadian Higher Education
    (Emerald, 2025-04-30) Hari, Amrita; Nardon, Luciara; Palić, Dunja
    Purpose Educational institutions are investing heavily in the internationalization of their campuses to attract global talent. Yet, highly skilled immigrants face persistent labor market challenges. We investigate how immigrant academics experience and mitigate their double precarity (migrant and academic) as they seek employment in higher education in Canada. Design/methodology/approach We take a phenomenological approach and draw on reflective interviews with nine immigrant academics, encouraging participants to elaborate on symbols and metaphors to describe their experiences. Findings We found that immigrant academics constitute a unique highly skilled precariat: a group of professionals with strong professional identities and attachments who face the dilemma of securing highly precarious employment (temporary, part-time and insecure) in a new academic environment or forgoing their professional attachment to seek stable employment in an alternate occupational sector. Long-term, stable and commensurate employment in Canadian higher education is out of reach due to credentialism. Those who stay the course risk deepening their precarity through multiple temporary engagements. Purposeful deskilling toward more stable employment that is disconnected from their previous educational and career accomplishments is a costly alternative in a situation of limited information and high uncertainty. Originality/value We bring into the conversation discussions of migrant precarity and academic precarity and draw on immigrant academics’ unique experiences and strategies to understand how this double precarization shapes their professional identities, mobility and work integration in Canadian higher education.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Transnational Sensemaking Narratives of Highly Skilled Canadian
    (Emerald, 2023-08-16) Palic, Dunja; Nardon, Luciara; Hari, Amrita
    Purpose The authors answer calls for research on the experiences of international professionals' career transitions by investigating how highly skilled immigrants make sense of their career changes in the host country's labor market. Design/methodology/approach The authors report on a qualitative, inductive and elaborative study, drawing on sensemaking theories and career transitions literature and nine semi-structured reflective interviews with highly skilled Canadian immigrants. Findings The authors identified four career change narratives: mourning the past, accepting the present, recreating the past and starting fresh. These narratives are made sense of in a transnational context: participants contended with tensions between past, present and future careers and between relevant home and host country factors affecting their career decisions. Participants who were mourning the past or recreating the past identified more strongly with their home country professions and struggled to find resources in Canada. In accepting the present and starting fresh, participants leveraged host country networks to find career opportunities and establish themselves and their families in the new environment. Originality/value A transnational ontology emphasizes that immigrants' lives are multifaceted and span multiple national contexts. The authors highlight how the tensions between the home and host country career contexts shape immigrants' sensemaking narratives of their international career change. The authors encourage scholars and practitioners to take a transnational contextual approach (spatial and temporal) to guide immigrants' career transitions and integration into the new social environment.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Mentoring Global Talent: An Integrative Review
    (Emerald, 2025-07-02) Zhang, Hui; Nardon, Luciara
    Purpose The international mentoring literature predominantly features traditional company-assigned expatriates as protégés overlooking other types of global talent, such as immigrants, refugees, and international graduates, who may help organizations gain long-term IHRM competitive advantages. We integrate multidisciplinary research to better understand the role of mentoring as a global talent management tool, identify research gaps, and propose future research directions. Design/methodology/approach We draw on an integrative review of 71 academic journal articles published between 1999 and 2024 to explore the role of mentoring in managing global talent (i.e. expatriates, immigrants, refugees, and international students and graduates). Findings We found that research has identified and examined relationships between various antecedents and outcomes of mentoring but mainly treating mentoring as a talent development tool. Less is known about the role of mentoring as a recruitment and selection tool in the pre-employment context. Mentoring is an important HRM tool that contributes to managing a global talent pool and developing existing employees. Originality/value The review contributes to a better understanding of the characteristics and processes involved in mentoring in a global context by proposing a framework that incorporates antecedents of mentoring, characteristics of the mentoring process, and mentoring outcomes. It highlights the value of mentoring as a recruitment and selection tool supporting global talent management and identifies avenues for future research.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Formal Mentoring Programs for Immigrant Employment
    (Springer, 2024-03-05) Zhang, Hui; Nardon, Luciara
    Organizations increasingly use formal mentoring programs to socialize new employees, retain existing workforce, and increase organizational diversity. This study examines formal mentoring programs in a novel context – as support interventions to assist immigrants in finding employment. Facilitated by immigrant-serving organizations (ISOs), sometimes in partnership with employing organizations, pre-employment mentoring programs recruit volunteer mentors and match them with immigrant protégés in need of employment support. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and archival data, we critically examine the benefits and challenges of pre-employment mentoring programs. While beneficial for multiple stakeholders (e.g., immigrants, mentors, employers, and ISOs), pre-employment mentoring programs encounter a series of challenges, including mentor-protégé mismatches, perceived lack of commitment to the mentoring relationships, and unmet expectations. The programs’ reliance on volunteering and stakeholders’ varying understandings and expectations of mentoring contribute to these challenges, resulting in inconsistent mentoring outcomes. The study highlights the importance of understanding how contextual factors influence formal mentoring outcomes. Additionally, it reinforces ISOs’ critical but constrained role in facilitating immigrants’ access to mentoring at the pre-employment stage.