‘I changed my strategy and looked for jobs on Gumtree’: the ecological circumstances and international graduates’ agency and strategies to navigate the Australian labour market

Abstract

Despite a significant number of international graduates staying in the host countries on post-graduation visas, their experiences in gaining access to the host labour market are less documented. This article addresses this critical but under-researched topic. It discusses the ecological circumstances impacting international graduates' participation in the Australian host labour market, including the temporality of their visas, employers' concerns, constraints of the market, time issue and bargaining position. Drawing on agency theory, the study shows two forms of agency enacted by international graduates in navigating the host market: needs-response agency, entailing their choice of field, persistence, and early job-seeking, and agency as becoming, entailing their professional identity development to become more employable. The study found the following common strategies adopted by international graduates: proactively explaining their work rights to employers, using alternative job search channels, reskilling, evidencing their professional skills, undertaking internships, networking and creating jobs for themselves and other peers. The study offered fresh insights into international graduates' career adaptive behaviours, job-seeking skills and career management skills.

The transnational in‐between identity of Chinese student returnees from the UK: Mobility, variations and pathways

“…Throughout UK1 and CH2, student returnees continuously mediated their identities between the essentialist Chinese Us and the non‐essentialist foreign Others . The changes over time resonate with the ‘life‐course’ perspective identified by some scholars (Biesta & Tedder, 2007; Tran et al, 2020) and the understanding of selves as constituted by ‘a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present’ (Anderson, 1991, p. 24). Self‐mobility over time makes for a complex understanding of the selves in mobility over space.…”

“…Although the above excerpts indicate the wayfarers’ strong orientations to envisioning mobility (Tu & Nehring, 2019), they did not initiate proactive agentic responses to change their local lives in China. Instead, the excerpts indicate their agency as circumvention (Tran et al, 2020), and the remaining salience of anticipating transnational livelihood as a runaway strategy among some student returnees (Lei & Guo, 2020). As Bauman argued, agency is ‘as much a condition as it is the outcome of the new technique of power, with the art of escape as its major tools’ (2000, p. 14).…”

“…More importantly, they indicate the ‘ecological’ state of agency, of being in constant change with the ‘temporal–relational contexts‐for‐action’ (Biesta & Tedder, 2007, p. 136). This ecological state highlights the state of agency on the move (Tran et al, 2020; Tran & Vu, 2018), as well as the intricacy and indeterminacy of the internal–external identity negotiation process (Bhabha, 1996; Jenkins, 2008).…”

Post-Graduation Work Visas and Loopholes: Insights into Support Provision for International Graduates from the Perspectives of Migration Agents, Universities, and International Graduates

“…Objective barriers include the temporary nature of the visa and the availability of jobs that fit the visa length (ibid). Additionally, barriers arise from a constrained labor market in the host country characterized by employers’ lack of understanding about the policy and preference for local citizens or permanent residents (Blackmore & Rahimi, 2019; Coffey et al, 2021; Tran et al, 2020a, 2020b). Other factors that impede temporary graduates’ employment opportunities include their lack of local work experiences and networks as well as lack of continuing support from universities for alumni employability development (Berquist et al, 2019).…”

“You are not as localised as I need”: employability of Chinese returning graduates

“…Alongside pull factors from the home country, push factors from host countries like Australia, the USA and the UK have encouraged the return of Chinese students in recent years. Push factors include tougher competition of the host labour market and limited job opportunities (Blackmore et al, 2017;Tran et al, 2020a), tightening of migration policies (Dam et al, 2018;Tran et al, 2020b) and rising inward national protectionism (Xiong and Mok, 2020).…”