Abstract
The objective of this chapter is to find evidence of empiric relations among work identity, meaning and meaningfulness of work in the immigration context. The method used was systematic literature review, adopting PRISMA recommendations. The following database has been consulted: Scopus, Web of Science, SciELO, PsycInfo and Lilacs. Empiric articles available between 2010 and 2020 have been used, with work identity, meaning and meaningfulness of work, immigration and immigrant descriptors in Portuguese and English. Data was analyzed with thematic content analysis. Results show twenty-seven articles have been found. The created categories considered each construct separately, being three for work identity, two for meaning of work, and none for meaningfulness of work. The main conclusions were that work identity in a host country depends a lot of the environment characteristics, institutional recognition and social status, and on immigrant personal characteristics. In addition, the type of career favors or hinders redefinition of work identity.
TopBackground
The term “work identity” is defined as a kind of social identity that poses work in a central position for an individual self-description (Mcnulty & Brewster, 2017; Moura & Silva, 2019). It is an expression that enhances the scope of identity at work, which refers to the way the individual builds himself/herself from work (Dickie, 2003; Dutton et al., 2010), because it places work as a central element in self-concept, and not only as an aspect of personal self-description (Brown, 2019; Corlett et al., 2017; Miscenko & Day, 2016).
Work identity maintains close relation with other kinds of social identity, such as occupational identity (Kirpal, 2004), organizational identity (Gjerde & Alvesson, 2020) and professional identity (Caza & Creary, 2016). These approaches reveal how challenging it is to understand the value assigned to work without considering career or profession (Bitencourt et al., 2011).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Professional Identity: Kind of group or company identity, related to career, formed from the feeling of belonging to a professional or occupational group and the choice of an area.
Meaning of Work: Mentions reinterpretation assigned by each individual to the value of work based on their personal experience.
Meaningfulness of Work: Group of beliefs understood over the years about what work is, whereas meaning of work
Immigration: Movement of people from one country to another, in a permanent or temporary way, to work and/or live
Systematic Review: Secondary study which, parting from a well-defined research question, have the objective of identifying, choosing, analyzing and summarizing important primary studies available in scientific literature.
Work Identity: Kind of social identity that poses work in a central position for an individual self-description.
PRIMA: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis