Skilled Migrant Professionals October 2014 | Page 29

Migration

Are We
Squandering the
Skills of Migrant
Professionals?
Dr Kyoung-Hee Yu,
PhD, Senior
lecturer and
Honours
coordinator, School
of management,
UNSW Australia
Business School

A

well-developed sense of professional identity within business benefits society as a whole.
Among other positive effects, it reinforces ethical behaviour and increases the likelihood
that customers will receive the best recommendations and advice.
Australian School of Business (ASB) senior lecturer Kyoung-Hee Yu has spent several years
looking at professional identity as a basis for professional conduct.
“Managerial logic has on the whole eroded professional identity,” said Yu. “Our proposition
is that migrants, and possibly other non-traditional professional groups such as women and minorities, provide a stronghold of professional identity.”
Yu has targeted her research towards the occupation of accounting, which she says has seen
a greater migrant intake than any other occupation in Australia. During the past seven years, an
average of 9,000 foreign-born migrant accountants a year have been welcomed under Australia’s skilled migration program.
“We think that the mechanisms for higher professional identity among migrant accountants
have to do with their position in the hierarchy of the organisation as well as the fact that work is
more central in migrant professionals’ lives.”
But there are caveats employers should heed. One is that migrants are more likely to have
negative workplace experiences in Australia that can dampen their professional identity, compared with locals whose professional identity tends to rise the longer they stay in the profession.
Another is that migrants tend not have the benefit of mentoring and development opportunities
so these factors can’t act to raise their professional identity as they do for locals.
“Migrant professionals feel more positive than the locals about their profession,” Yu says.

October 2014 | www.smpmagazine.com.au

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