Young Adults from Immigrant Backgrounds and the Labour Market. Professional Orientation and Their Underlying Rationales
This article presents the results of exploratory research on how young adults from immigrant backgrounds in Montreal negotiate their professional career paths. In the scientific literature, their transition to the labor market has been problematized mainly with regard to employment access. Based on the life history method, our qualitative research focuses on 25 young adults from immigrant backgrounds who have two years of experience in the Montreal labor market. The interpretive angle of the research takes into account the social relations and determinations, negotiated and represented in the discourse of interviewed young adults. The results show that the experiences of discrimination (racism, linguicism, religious intolerance) drive many of these young adults to integrate themselves into English-speaking environments by distancing themselves from French-language environments.