The role of intercultural communication in the workplace adaptation of high-skilled Turkish immigrants in Vienna

High-skilled immigrant workplace adaptation is often framed through credentials, onboarding and local-language proficiency. This study explores how intercultural communication shapes everyday workplace participation among high-skilled Turkish immigrants in Vienna. Drawing on seventeen Turkish-language interviews and a six-week WhatsApp follow-up, the study presents an interpretive thematic analysis of participant-reported critical incidents in which competence, recognition, and belonging became consequential. The findings show that multilingual repertoires can operate as workplace capital, while informal talk, dialect and humour produce partial participation and situationally fragile competence. The study argues that formal inclusion does not necessarily secure interactional belonging in multilingual workplaces.