Downward professional mobility, cultural difference and immigrant niches: Dynamics of and changes to migrants’ attitudes towards interpersonal communication and work performance

Abstract

Immigrants’ labour market participation is a crucial indicator of their assimilation within the host societies. The workplace is a key site of intercultural transmission, where migrants receive opportunities to recognise, evaluate and prospectively adapt to the norms, values and standards of the new socio-cultural field. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with Poles working below their skill level in Norway, this article analyses two work-related areas where cultural difference is encountered: (1) interpersonal communication and (2) work performance and attitude. Migrants take jobs in niche economies, thereby working below their qualifications. Degradation limits their opportunities to encounter non-migrants and hinders them from recognising the cultural codes typical for the host community. A purely occasional contact with non-migrants leads to numerous cultural misunderstandings and cultural distrust in the long term. Those migrants who work outside of immigrant niches more easily comprehend cultural differences; as a result, they more effectively adapt in Norway. In the Bourdieu-inspired theoretical framework, I propose to recognise ‘moments of consciousness’ of the habitus as key moments in the reflexive adaptation process, offering a new perspective on habitus change as an element of adaptation to a new socio-cultural working environment.

Artificial intelligence in global health equity: an evaluation and discussion on the application of ChatGPT, in the Chinese National Medical Licensing Examination

“…This likely mirrors ChatGPT's linguistic advantage when dealing with English questions and the challenges arising from language and cultural discrepancies when addressing non-English queries (29). For instance, difficulties in language comprehension, regulations and interpretation errors arising from cultural differences are pressing issues requiring attention (27,30,31). Consequently, we suggest AI tool developers need to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of non-English cultures and languages to tailor and optimize AI tools more effectively.…”

Perceived Communication Barriers With Career Management: An Assessment in Terms of Demographic Variables

“…Communication has different definitions in many different fields. For example, the concept of communication is defined as the process of conveying information, feelings and thoughts to the other party in written, verbal or non-verbal form (Barton & Riddle, 2022;Joyce & Long, 2022;Liang et al, 2022;Przybyszewska, 2022). According to Bakar, Krimat Shah, Qingyu (2020), communication is defined as "Communication means the existence of knowledge, learning and understanding in a transitional period".…”