SMACT · Skilled Migrant Adjustment to Career Transitions

Skilled Migrant Adjustment to Career Transitions

The Skilled Migrant Adjustment to Career Transitions (SMACT) Project was a two year mixed-methods research study that aimed to provide an interdisciplinary examination of adjustment processes in multi-national skilled migrant workers to a single host country (i.e., Switzerland) in terms of their work-related and non-work outcomes. The SMACT project has begun to improve our understanding of the adjustment processes of expatriates, by combining perspectives from the two disciplines of migration studies and organisational psychology. Due to labour shortage demands, every year international companies invest millions on expatriate workers to fill skill gaps, whilst largely ignoring how levels of adjustment can affect work performance and well-being. The research undertaking in the SMACT project presented an interdisciplinary examination of adjustment processes by linking work and non-work variables with modulating demographic factors (i.e., age, gender, country of origin, previous migration experience, or forms of expatriation, etc.), to connect these separate elements into a temporal perspective. In this mixed-method research design, variables were investigated using qualitative (i.e., semi-structured interviews with female skilled migrants N = 24), and quantitative data collections (i.e., online survey over three time-points, T1 = 500, T2 = 200 & T3 = 80). The qualitative data aimed to explore female expatriate adjustment processes, as female expatriates have been largely under-represented in the expatriate literature base and the unique challenges faced have not been well-documented. The quantitative strand aimed to examine pre-migration, migration and post-migration phases to assess different trajectories over time based on work outcomes and non-work outcomes. The SMACT project had three main objectives to explore female expatriate processes, examine differences in adjustment, work and non-work outcomes between Assigned Expatriates (AEs) and Self-initiated Expatriates (SIEs), and examine personality predictors on adjustment processes for work and non-work outcomes. Therefore, this project supports the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals by focusing on Goal 8 of promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all and Goal 10 of reducing inequality within and between countries.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union