The Work of Cultural Transition: An Emerging Model

Abstract

In today’s uncertain, fluid job market, transnational mobility has intensified. Though the concept of cultural transition is increasingly used in sport and career research, insight into the processes of how individuals produce their own development through work and relationships in shifting cultural patterns of meaning remains limited. The transnational industry of sports, in which athletes’ psychological adjustment to cultural transitions has implications for both performance and meaningful life, serves as a backdrop for this article. This study applied the life story method to interviews with 15 professional and semi-professional athletes, focusing particularly on the cultural transition aspect of their transnational athletic careers. The aims of the study were to identify the developmental tasks of cultural transitions and strategies/mechanisms through which cultural transitions were enacted. Three underlying mechanisms of the transition process that assisted athletic career adaptability were social repositioning, negotiation of cultural practices, and meaning reconstruction. Based on the data analyses, a temporal model of cultural transition is proposed. The results of this research provide professionals working in the fields of career counseling and migrant support with a content framework for enhancing migrant workers’ adaptabilities and psychological wellbeing.

Non-Professional Fijian Rugby Players’ Cultural Transitioning into New Zealand

“…In Australasia, sub-elite Fijian players can develop their careers outside Fiji through educational scholarships, contracts arranged through family, friends or other social networks and recruitment by official talent agents working for both professional and community organisations (Kanemasu & Molnar 2012, Mumm & O'Connor 2014. Even if successful in gaining an offer to play at professional or semi-professional levels Fijian players face significant challenges in adapting to foreign ways of playing and training and with adapting to cultural differences in day-today life, as is the case globally across a wide range of sports (Light, Evans & Lavalllee, 2019;Ryba et al 2012;Ryba et al 2016).…”

“…A body of work on athlete cultural transitioning developed from Schlossberg's Transition Theory (1981).draws upon a number of transition models that outline the different types of transitions and challenges individuals typically face. Schlossberg developed transition theory as a way of understanding what is involved in major transitions within people's lives and was later applied to athlete cultural transitioning (see, Ryba et al 2016). It provides an effective means of understanding and explaining the challenges involved in making this significant transition at an individual level for each of the four Fijian participants in this study.…”

“…A transition generally results from one or a combination of events which leads to a change in assumptions about oneself and the world that requires a corresponding change in behaviour and relationships (Anderson, Goodman & Schlossberg 2011). Transition theory has been applied to athlete transitioning from a psychological perspective with Ryba and colleagues' work (Ryba et al 2016) identifying the social adaptive processes that athletes must overcome when transitioning. In this article we work with the definition of a transition as an event, or non-event (an expected transition that never eventuates), that significantly changes relationships, routines and assumptions and roles (see Light et al 2019).…”

“…The challenge of combining a sporting career with studies or work created stress and worry for the participants as Ryba et al (2004) Siti's introduction to high school rugby. In this school there were high expectations of academic and rugby achievement but this was foreign to him and provides an example of the challenges commonly facing transitioning athletes (see, Agergaard and Ryba, 2014;Ryba et al, 2016) The different approach to rugby alone was a challenge for him because he had to adapt what he described as his 'chilled' approach to rugby and "just turning up and playing" developed in Fiji, to the increased hours dedicated to rugby training and the more structured and detailed approach to training. His newly acquired skill of time management set him apart from other "Islanders", but something that he said his 'Kiwi' friends saw as common sense.…”

“…Research on the cultural and contextual adjustments required by professional athletes transitioning within the global, transnational sport industry (see, Agergaard & Ryba, 2014) makes a valuable contribution to knowledge about elite level athletes but has overlooked the experiences of non-elite, non-professional, athletes (Ryba, Stambulova & Ronkainen, 2016). In this article we redress this oversight by reporting on the findings of a study conducted on the experiences of four Fijian rugby players who moved to New Zealand as adolescents and young men to pursue opportunities for rugby with a focus on their cultural challenges and adjustments.…”