Restoring Hope: Responding to Career Concerns of Immigrant Clients

Immigrants, whose career path is often different from the one described in traditional career theory, compose a large portion of the work force. As a result, a modified career theory and career counseling strategies that respond to this population’s specific circumstances are needed. In this paper, issues in immigrant career transition are described, including barriers that interfere with the transition process and factors that contribute to its success. Immigrants face many intra-individual, relational, and contextual level barriers along with challenges of cultural adaptation. Successful transition relies on factors within the individual, such as adaptability and hardiness, and also on relational and systemic supports, such as family, language programs, and government sponsored organizations. Suggestions for counselling practice are offered, derived from a multileveled interactive conceptual framework. Interventions tailored to address individual, relational and contextual levels are presented, with an emphasis on social justice interventions that are seldom discussed in psychological literature. The author presents a part of her own experience to illustrate the issues.