Outlanders at work: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of foreign IT professionals’ work experiences in Germany

Abstract

The information technology (IT) industry is becoming more widely renowned for its professionals seeking global career opportunities. These individuals independently build careers abroad, often receiving limited economic benefits while facing socially conditioned perceptions from their employers, peers, managers and clients. However, there is little research on how they perceive their personal and social worlds, and use their knowledge, skills and other personal resources to shape their careers in these circumstances. This study explores the meaning of being a foreign professional as understood by the IT professionals themselves by reflecting on their expectations, emotions and interactions with others. In-depth interviews were conducted with 11 non-national professionals working in domestic IT companies in Germany. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis to gain insight through their individual perspectives into their agentic work behaviours and the injustices they perceived. We identified three major themes that explained how participants interpreted their roles in their organisations (reinterpretation), resituated themselves in their interactions with clients (recontextualisation) and changed the way they made sense of their status in their current circumstances (reframing). The experiential themes were discussed in light of literature, while individual nuances led us to identify unexplored features of the studied phenomenon.