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Correlates of Vocational Success in Refugee Work Adaptation 1
Author(s) -
Tang John,
O'Brien Thomas P.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1990.tb01484.x
Subject(s) - refugee , prestige , socioeconomic status , vocational education , homeland , acculturation , occupational prestige , immigration , work (physics) , demographic economics , adaptation (eye) , psychology , political science , social psychology , sociology , demography , politics , law , economics , pedagogy , engineering , mechanical engineering , population , philosophy , linguistics , neuroscience
Past research on Indochinese refugees has shown that status inconsistency (loss of socioeconomic status from their last job in Indochina to their most recent job in the United States) has a strong negative effect on acculturation. This study examines refugee adaptation to working in America and the effect of status inconsistency on work performance. After three years in the U.S., there was great improvement in job performance. We had predicted that greater status inconsistency would be associated with poorer vocational performance. The status inconsistency effect was found for those refugees who previously held high‐prestige positions in their homeland, but only during the time before they had spent 3 years in America. Previous high‐prestige refugees who had lived in the U.S. for less than three years did not stay on their jobs as long as former low‐prestige refugees. After three years, however, the former high‐prestige refugees outlasted the former low‐prestige refugees.