Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the protean career management and networking approaches of job-seeking highly skilled racialized immigrant women in Canada, what they are currently doing to network for professional opportunities and employment, and the challenges that they face in expanding their networks. Racialized immigrant women bring skill-sets, qualifications, certifications, and work experience only to find that these professional accolades often mean very little to employers. We additionally investigate the extent to which their attempts to expand their professional network can mitigate these structural barriers. We also provide recommendations that the Government of Canada can implement to improve immigrant women’s networking skills and experiences and that immigrant women themselves can do to improve their conditions of settlement and professional development.

Keywords:Career Management; Networking Challenges; Sociology; Empowerment; Social Networks

Introduction

The relationship between networking and career success is a well-documented one [1-3]. Many jobs in the private sector are not well circulated or advertised and thus networks fill these gaps, providing empowerment, integration, information, and friendship for the job seeker. Networks create opportunities to discover new expertise, new social circles, new companions, and new insights on cultural norms [4]. Professional networks create “connective potential between [heterogeneous] social groups” inside and beyond national borders [5]. Networks can be interpersonal or intra- or inter-organizational, and are strengthened by the Internet, communication technologies, and social media [4]. Davis et al., [1] find that LinkedIn, for example, provides an excellent resource to build critically important weak ties through the ease of content visibility, retrieval, and editability, and because it provides an important communication channel to build new contacts, maintain relationships, browse profiles, access news, strategically network, and gain longitudinal informational benefits. Those who are socially adept and active in online social activities are more likely to use social networking sites. Even passive consumption on LinkedIn has networking benefits (helping an individual gain awareness of the knowledge, resources, and connections held by their contacts), however online networking is not a panacea or great equalizer for introverts. Despite all of the benefits of online social networking, face-to-face networking remains the pre-eminent method of connection building [1]. Finally, networking can mitigate the constraints of society’s increasingly flexible and fragmented work-life structures [1,4]. The dynamism of network formation will change over an individual’s life course, and will reflect changing life circumstances [6].

Job seekers typically use two central methods to secure employment: formal searches through online or newspaper job listings, and informal searches through networks where they utilize family, friend, and acquaintance connections to secure employment. Network-based searches provide job seekers with key resources and signal information about workers’ qualities to potential employers. Researchers in this field estimate that a larger percentage of jobs are found through informal networks1 [7,8]. Immigrant women who are able to build robust and expansive networks are better equipped to overcome settlement and labor market challenges and to secure employment that is aligned with their skill-sets. In fact, highly skilled racialized immigrant women who are transnationally connected and who maintain relationships with a wide variety of social circles in multiple countries have the greatest potential to maximize the benefits of their networking efforts [3,9].

Immigrant women have historically been excluded from and lacked access to organizational circles [10]. Those immigrant women that successfully network do so by managing their career strategy, cultural norms, ethnic affiliations, skill-sets, their connections (knowing who to talk to and how to talk to them), industry expectations and labor market dynamics [5]. Networking is defined by Forret and Dougherty [10] as “individuals’ attempts to develop and maintain relationships with others who have the potential to assist them in their work or careers” (284). Davis et al. [1] write that networking is “the capability or competency to develop diverse social networks and utilize them to one’s advantage” (4). People with excellent networking skills are more adept at developing and maintaining contacts and are better equipped to use their connections and alliances to influence the decisions of their coalitions. There is moreover a relationship between networking and the development of extraversion and professional success [1,10]. Shaymardanov et al. [2] define career-important networks as social relationships inside and outside of organizations that help workers build their careers and professionally develop themselves. They write that networks have an instrumental purpose in facilitating migration, providing support and solidarity, and helping immigrants to build ethnic and cultural community kinship and friendship ties, derive financial assistance, gain job information, and obtain emotional support [2,3,6,11].

Immigrant women face a host of barriers in accessing professional networks in Canada such as discrimination in social, community, and work settings, high language expectations in their locales, being unfamiliar with Canadian cultural norms, lacking access to childcare, and being burdened with domestic responsibilities. Racialized immigrant women do not always have access to the kinds of social capital resources that will allow them to break their isolation to meet professionals and mentors within their industries [4]. When immigrant women struggle accessing professional and social networks, they tend to rely on their cultural communities which offer important emotional supports and stability, but not necessarily the information, influence, and references they need to secure field-specific employment [2,11,12]. Although immigrant women interviewees report that networking helps them to access employment and gain career advancement, networking does not occur in a vacuum of other social dynamics. Social and professional networks are gendered and racialized which means that the social and cultural capital that they generate are also gendered and racialized [13]. What this means is that the discriminatory barriers to building immigrant network-building put inherent limits on the benefits such networking can generate.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the protean career management and networking approaches of job-seeking highly skilled racialized immigrant women in Canada, what they are currently doing to network for professional opportunities and employment, and the challenges that they face in expanding their networks. Racialized immigrant women bring skill-sets, qualifications, certifications, and work experience only to find that these professional accolades often mean very little to employers [13]. We additionally investigate the extent to which their attempts to expand their professional network can mitigate these structural barriers. We also provide recommendations that the Government of Canada can implement to improve immigrant women’s networking skills and experiences and that immigrant women themselves can do to improve their conditions of settlement and professional development.

Networking as a Skilled Immigrant

Immigrant women in Canada professionally network in a context where they are often racialized on the basis of their skin color, name, accent, religious observance, or a host of other markers which means that the starting point for their networking is not the same as those professional women who are not racialized. Like in Canada, Carangio et al. [13] found that Australia is dominated by white-Anglo and multicultural non-Anglo working spaces. In the latter, all departments are characterized by diversity fed by the immigrant community, but the pay is lower. Among the networks in the former, it is difficult for speakers of English as a second language to network in white dominated spaces [13]. Hillgren et al. [4] note that “Networking is a two-way process, and it will be effective only when each person can understand the other side. Thus, it’s obvious that it is difficult for networking to take place in the presence of any kind of barriers that hinder interaction between the communicators. Cultural barriers reduce effective communication at both personal and professional levels” (17).

Pedulla and Pager [7] compare two potential ways in which social networks are implicated in sustaining job search racial disparities. The first is network access. Racialized people have similar access to job information through formal channels such as online platforms, but they have differential access to job information and resources shared in social networks (e.g., Black job seekers are less likely to hear about specific job openings from network channels). The second is network returns. Racialized people enjoy differentiated accrued benefits of social network resources and not all networks are able to provide the same benefits [7,11]. In many cases, these researchers note that minority underperformance might have less to do with the minority capabilities themselves, and more to do with them being unable to access productive networks [7,14]. Pedulla and Pager [14] describe the concept of network placement as the significance of having well-placed contacts (e.g., those with hiring authority, positions of maximum assistance) yielding significant financial benefits as network placement. Network placement without racial congruity can have fraught and highly unpredictable outcomes for racialized job seekers (988).

Another core concept that these researchers have identified is network mobilization. Network mobilization is the extent to which network connections can activate resources that are available to them and mobilize them on the job seekers’ behalf. Popielarz and Cserpes [11], for example, write that cross-racial and cross-ethnic confidants are rare in the United States, although these ties have increased significantly over the past four decades. Racial and ethnic heterophily in immigrants’ networks is significantly correlated with citizenship, language proficiency, gender, education, and wealth. The likelihood of immigrants making such ties depends in part on the racial regime in the destination country including entrenched patterns of prejudice. An American study found that Black connections are not able to mobilize resources as effectively as white connections due to racial disparities (989). Black and white job seekers have differential experiences of social network mobilization for job offers. White job seekers are approximately 6 percentage points more likely to receive a job offer from network search methods compared to Black job seekers. There are therefore nearly twice as many returns using network searches for white job seekers than Black job seekers, and African American job seekers would need to utilize approximately twice as many network contacts as white job seekers to “accrue the same labor market benefit” and would need to apply to roughly twice as many jobs as white job seekers to secure the same number of interviews. African American job seekers are approximately five percentage points less likely than white job seekers to receive job offers when using networks to secure jobs. The use of network alters (connection facilitators) contacting employers on job seekers’ behalf explains 15.5 percent differences between “black-white joboffer gap among network-based applications” [7]. White network alters are therefore significantly more effective in helping white job seekers secure employment than Black network alters are for Black job seekers.

Researchers believe that weaker returns for network-based searching are related to the different ways that job seekers mobilize their contacts and how employers respond to their various network contacts. An example that is noted by Lin [15] is that racial homophily among social networks means that Black workers are more likely to have black social ties and thus their voices and recommendations may be devalued by employers due to racial bias [7,15,16,17]. Pedulla and Prager [7] note that “Racial discrimination in hiring and other aspects of the employment process remains strong and persistent, but interventions that target these more subtle dynamics may also be important for reducing racial labor market inequalities” (1008).

Racialized immigrant women face all of the above dynamics and many more. Addressing the role that network alters play in helping someone locate a job before the job posting goes public, Hajra notes that “we receive the job openings [from] HR…before even it’s posted outside of the organization. So, for a short time, like one week, if I know someone who is good for that job, I can refer him or her before that job posting is outside, for example, on LinkedIn or on Indeed or any other things. So yeah, networking is very good for anyone who is a newcomer here in Canada.” Akram notes that network builders prefer to help their own connections to succeed: “Like they prefer their own people…their connections…who know each other already, so that I feel like, you know, isolated sometimes as well. So that’s kind of it and they prefer their own favorite people or …who…they have connection with. So that’s what I’ve been feeling as well for quite some time, but I just tried to focus on work…I feel like [they help] the people that they know…have good connections with or they are friends with.”

Racialized immigrant women have to take matters into their own hands by relying on network alters in racially diverse work environments and through self-initiated networking to succeed. One survey respondent, Hrida, captures these dynamics well:
My superiors have been racist to an extent…[my boss] would always comment about my communications [and] about the kind of emails that I write to the clients. He would always, you know, micromanage me for everything. [He’d say] Ohh, you don’t know how it happens in Canada, so those kind of things and I have definitely faced that on one of the jobs and there was another place where I was working…it had a lot of Black population and I think I was the only brown there and my boss was very supportive and very kind and he gave me…all the…mileage for learning and supporting me through my transition into IT… It was a small company, 5-6 employees and things like that where I faced this problem. And then, of course, referral market also works and goes a long way. So sometimes it is the references that get you the job, right?...one of my colleagues [knew a] person, she forwarded the resume [to her] and I got the job with [company]. Not that I have been applying to [company] for ages. I never got a call right. But through the internal reference, I did get an interview call. Everyone liked me, the person who referred me was not on the panel. I did get a job and of course I have renewed my contract for another year. They’re happy with all the faculty feedbacks and responses and student feedbacks. So it’s going good so far.

The expectation that immigrant women showcase their ‘Canadian experience’ can negatively impair their networking experiences. Shanti describes being invisible to her networks until she mentions that she has Canadian experience: “And of course, the Canadian experience is a huge barrier. I mean, unless and until they see that you have some sort of experience which says Canada in your education or your work. So I started working on part time basis with lawyers and that experience on my LinkedIn got me calls from different consultants where they approached me for similar positions. I actually saw the difference happening there immediately as soon as I put up a Canadian experience on my profile. Until then, I was invisible.”

One frequently occurring issue raised in the networking literature is the problem that racialized immigrant women face trying to find network channels. Stella describes the difficulty locating a reliable network, “But yeah, actually when I heard that that [other focus group] participant share about their professional networking and their gatherings and etcetera, I really like that. I could have someone here locally to have that, but I feel that maybe I didn’t find the good channel, but it looks like we don’t have those kind of professional sharing and forum that we could talk to each other [about] our concerns and resolve questions and give [each other] advice.” Aya describes the difficulty she faced figuring out how to network effectively:

Yeah, I would say [it took] nine months to land my first job in the field and before I also faced the issue of Canadian work [experience]. That was a big reason why it took a long while. A lot of people said I should network. I think [the issue] for me was the culture of networking itself. I couldn’t understand it. Like, OK, you show up to those events and you talk a little bit, but then I didn’t know how to take that connection further and it didn’t feel personal. It felt forced, a little bit, even though I went through the trainings and all those like workshops where you learn about Canadian work experience, where you learn how to network, how to present yourself, all that stuff. But it just didn’t seem genuine to me. However, the first job, in the end, was through a connection that I made in college. A friend of mine who’s also an immigrant received an invitation to interview. But she couldn’t do it at the time, and she told me to go for it. And that’s how I got my first job.

Ryan and Mulholland [6] note that “Highly skilled migrants are not immune to loneliness and need to build personal networks as sources of companionship” (253). Despite being a self-starter, focus group respondent, Jamila, explains that networking is a constant learning process, it is lonely, and that there are limits on the usefulness of government assisted employment services:

When I came to Canada, I looked for a job for three months. I went to an organization that is funded by the government in order to find a job. But, to be honest, most of them were useless. So I started networking a lot in order to get a job. Thanks to networking I found a good business development position in a food service company. I worked for eight months and then the company went through some financial trouble and I was laid off [in the re-structuring process]. And then I looked actively for a job, and I was lucky to find this opportunity in [my current] company. We are always learning, but I’m not learning that much…I [have] noticed […] that to find the job and the good position you have [to] network, right, and you need to build it up yourself. I mean, I went to a lot of organization funded by the government and they tried, they’re trying to help you for sure, but it’s not really that useful. So, I had to build-up my network myself. I’m still building that network. I started to go to network [events] and even to look for networking, even to ask for help [but] I felt a little bit lonely and not really supported.

Protean Career Management, Networking and their Discontents

In order to advance professionally, improve their status in the workplace, learn about new opportunities, overcome social isolation, effectively expand their list of contacts and acquaintances, gain ideas from multiple sources, workplace assistance, and career sponsorship, more effectively accomplish tasks, gain entry to challenging projects, receive protection and political guidance, and thus build their social capital and mitigate any exclusion they might face from spaces or positionalities of privilege, job seekers need to network [1,18]. Achieving subjective success through networking often requires self-directed vocational behavior or what is called protean career management [1,19-21] which we describe as using goal-setting and tenacity to achieve one’s employment goals [2]. In the career counselling field, selfdirected career management (SDCM) includes protean career management, what employees or prospective employees hold and do – leveraging their specific values and using their agency to get their desired results – and organizational career adaptability, what employers expect from their employees – expecting employees to take responsibility for the process of adapting and coping to changes in the workplace [22]. A protean career orientation can be a driver’s seat response to organizational career adaptability expectations: being decisive about the changes one wants can take precedence over the changes that are expected of one.

Characteristics that are critical for developing resilience through any career transition include: attitudes, behaviors, and competencies that show concern and investment in career outcomes, planning, self-directed control, being decisive, being curious and inquisitive, and developing confidence through goalsetting, managed self-presentation, charismatic social relations, and problem-solving. Being adaptive requires individuals to consciously respond to their environment with flexibility, optimism, a desire to learn, self-control (T), constant informationgathering, feedback elicitation, mobility preparedness, intentional positioning, self-awareness, creating influence, boundarymanagement, visibility, proactiveness, balance, fairness to self, and grounded openness [22] which realistic adjudicators would attest are skill-sets that are on-going, developed trial and error over an individual’s life course.

These skill-sets are resources, “centrally valued in their own right” or are “a means to obtain centrally valued ends” [22,23], that generate human, career, social, and movement capital. Each of these forms of capital draw upon psychological states of mind and capacities. Human capital includes acquiring and utilizing the abilities, state of being, beliefs, and personality characteristics described as well as drawing upon one’s educational level, professional experience, training, cognitive abilities, and workrelated knowledge to derive career benefits.

Career capital includes many things, however most significantly it refers to self-knowledge: “knowing why”: who they are and what they want, “knowing whom”: whom to engage in order to build effective networks, and “knowing how”: how to gain the requisite knowledge to achieve one’s goals [24]. Extraverted individuals possess an advantage in the knowing-whom career competency [1,10]. Networks of mutual acquaintances providing information, influence, and solidarity are the foundation for social capital. Social capital resources help job seekers to improve their position vis-à-vis other job applicants and leverage their assets in competitive settings [3,4]. Favorable network conditions are a major environmental determinant of the success of self-directed career management [22]. These resources have aggregate or compounding effects, they do not exist in isolation. Those who possess more resources or sources of capital in one area will also possess resources in another area. Having a strong sense of identity and knowledge of one’s own desired outcomes creates greater career knowledge. Positive situations and states reinforce and help to accumulate more positive situations and states. Diverse networks and diversified economic activities can increase levels of social inclusion among immigrants [5].

Career experts estimate that 70-80 job postings are unadvertised in what is called ‘the hidden job market’. Employers keep positions unadvertised for a number of reasons including budgetary constraints, they seek to fill a role that as not been made public, they seek to backfill a position from an employee that has yet to leave, or they want to avoid the influx of job applications from unqualified candidates or to rely on their network referrals [25]. Hillgren et al. [4] write that “Networking is considered as one of the most effective tools to get access to the hidden part, which makes developing networks especially important and necessary for immigrants” (12). Feldman [25] further writes that “those who target roles from the hidden job market will likely encounter far less competition in their search. Employers that opt not to post job openings are likely to recognize and often reward this strategy by prioritizing these applications over the hundreds of résumés they receive from job postings.”

Immigrant women describe facing challenges knowing exactly how to access the hidden job market. Shanti explains these dynamics very well:

It’s not just the newcomers who have to go through the networking or mentoring process. I know students who are in college now and even they are going through the networking stages, contacting [people to go out for] coffee. Basically, for example, a coffee chat with your peers or people who you want to work with because there is a huge hidden job market which cannot be explored until you have a network, or until you know how to navigate it. And this is not taught to you. You won’t understand this until you network and talk to people. [People] don’t network and talk to people because [they] don’t know that has to be done. So some employment agencies have amazing workshops, they were one of the reasons I was able to start maneuvering the job market. [X Agency] has these job search workshops and they teach you everything from making your CV to submitting your CV and applying and tailoring your CV to the requirement of the job position; [this process] is different from where we come, so I wouldn’t blame the process but the lack of information. I wouldn’t even say lack of information, but people probably sometimes don’t know where to look for it, so that becomes a barrier here.

Another resource challenge that racialized immigrant women face is Internet access and understanding the nuances of local employer expectations. Alicia explains that where she lives, employers want you to be referred by someone else which adds another layer to the networking-job search challenge: “[The issues is] not knowing the expectations of Canadian employers, not knowing how a Canadian workplace functions at the time [of arrival], but mostly not having Internet working. So not knowing who to reach out to, people who I could speak to that could refer me to jobs. Here in Nova Scotia the employers really prefer to reach out to people, not by sending resumes by LinkedIn or by e-mail, [rather] they prefer you to be referred by someone else. So, building this networking, [and] not having a networking at the time was very challenging for me and that was one of, if not the biggest reason why it took me a while to get my first job in my field.” Sometimes the lacked networking resource is not external, but internal to the person. Kayin describes the confidence that she gained having reliable and trustworthy referees. She suggests that smiling referees is a key to the job seeker’s success: “So this again speaks to putting confidence and trust in whomever I put down as my references. Your reference is the people around you and people liking you. Whatever reason I don’t know, they just like you…they smile at you when you interact with them. Most of the interviews were…mostly friendly chats where you would feel good with yourself. Like you’re even feel relaxed. I got to a point where I was mostly related. I was really, really relaxed in my interviews, like at that. At that point. It was a case of, oh, I’m gonna have fun. You employ me or you don’t employ me. But again, these are challenges that I’ve seen.” Sofia, for her part, describes the difficulty of selling oneself:

[I have] so much experience…working in a particular place and seeking…and…wanting that ladder, I think…I’ve gotten the rightful promotions…But I’ll just say that I’ve had to…put myself out there, [work] for those things, like ask for it…make my work known in my own subtle way…I’ve had to do that so that I’m able to [get] people [to] see that, my boss is see that…[to be] recommend[ed] for that role or something…I do have…a couple of friends or colleagues that have felt that they have been fairly mistreated …not being promoted or because of their skin color. But [that hasn’t] happened to me …I do know that I’ve had to just make that extra effort to put myself out there and make…sure that my work is [high quality].

Confidence facilitates the acquisition of critical career resources such as human capital, social resources, psychological resources, and identity resources. Treating personality characteristics as antecedents that generate specific values driving outcomes, researchers of protean career management describe the concept as perceived subjective and psychological success (compared to organization-led career development) guided by a personal values-driven attitude (“I depend on myself to move my career forward), internal standards (“In the past I have sided with my own values when the company asked me to do something I don’t agree with), internal direction, proactiveness (“When development opportunities have not been offered by my company, I’ve sought them out on my own), and independence (“What I think…is more important to me than what my company thinks”). There is a correlation, moreover, between a protean career orientation and an increased desire for inter- and intraorganizational mobility and opportunities for learning [21,26].

The protean career orientation is more common among older, more established and enterprising demographics. Protean career orientation is often boundaryless. A person has boundaryless career priorities when they seek to derive subjective and objective success vis-à-vis a range of measures such as work role/ position, upward mobility, flexibility in work conditions, and excellent opportunity structures through self-directed activation rather than organization-bestowed promotions [10]. With a boundaryless attitude, individuals exhibit a greater openness to experience new challenges, pursue work-related relationships beyond organizational boundaries and are comfortable with a career that involves several employers [21,27]. In their very effort to migrate to Canada for better life and improved professional opportunities, immigrant women embody aspects of the protean career orientation and boundaryless drive. Structures of racism, discrimination, and credentialism hold them back from asserting their already existing protean career orientation to its full potential. For example, Bidart, Degenne, and Grossetti [28] found that a person’s educational level and residential status affect the structure of their networks. Due to systemic racism and low credential recognition, highly skilled immigrant women are denied opportunities to showcase the kinds of skill-sets that would positively expand their networks or transform the configuration of their networks. Structures of social and professional barriers therefore negatively affect the structures of immigrant women’s networks.

As individuals leverage their varying tendencies towards proactive career management into network expansion which shapes not only socioeconomic mobility, social capital, social support, political and civic engagement opportunities, identity consolidation and clarification, immigrant integration, and a chance for them to uplift their physical and mental health, they are duly affected by the distinct structures of their personal networks [2]. Network structure, for example, affects socio-economic mobility, political engagement, and individual identity and is a predictor of individual health [3]. Individual and social outcomes are affected by the kinds of people in a network (composition) and how and to what degree those people are connected to each other (structure). The structure of a network refers to the connections between contacts to an individual job seeker and the network’s distributional characteristics such as the density of connections and the degree of connection fragmentation (a positive and important characteristic because structural holes and weak ties create opportunities for bridging social capital such as exposure to diverse information, autonomy, and a potentially greater capacity to control resources) [2,3,10,22]. Each tie type is associated with different patterns of emotions, emotional demands, social support requested, social status, and different forms of relative influence. Some ties or connections can enable admiration, closeness, and socialization, and some can create conflict and contempt. The ties of positive professional network formation are ones that involve a measure of confiding and advice giving, interactions that are made out of choice rather than obligation and that are energizing; negative ties are not necessarily a barrier to practical support, but they can cause distress and demand obligatory socializing [6,29]. Other important aspects of a network’s distributional character include connection transivity (degree to which connections require a central figure or hub and whether that central figure is the job seeker) and connection clustering, cohesion of connections and the job seeker, the centrality of the job seeker vis-à-vis the other connections and relative centralization wielded by the job seeker acting like a hub on a wheel. The type of support, whether instrumental, emotional, or companionship provided by the network or the different levels of cohesion between geographically distributed connections also matter [3]. Where racialized immigrant women network and how they network will directly affect their labor market outcomes.

Focus group respondent, Hailey, explains her understanding of protean career orientation and boundaryless intra-organizational networking:

I know you have to network like you might be in public works. You don’t know what’s happening with the people in the office, so you have to go for the staff event. So that’s what I’ve now realized that networking here is a big thing. So when they are doing events in the organization, you are in, you don’t say it doesn’t concern me. I don’t wanna go but going to those events helps you put a fact to the other people in that department. So when the job becomes available, you can easily apply, send an e-mail to say hey, I see that there’s a position in your department. Those are the kind of networking I now realize that you have to do when you’re internal in an organization so that they know you’re interested and can chat with you long before that job becomes available. To move up, you know, within the organization, you need some internal networking around you know, so that they know that your personality fits with them and things like that.

She notes further that successful networking and a protean career orientation has to happen outside of one’s cultural milieu:

People have started talking about networking, that networking is a very, very important for the position you want to go to. Don’t stick with just the people of your culture, because sometimes we arrive and we’re only talking to people of our culture like Nigeria, only talking to the Nigerians. Things are very hard to explore. Find out the association of the profession. You wanna go and join because that is one way. I must confess that I actually got a job because I network with the association of admin assistants. And that’s when I got to know lots of people in there. And so when I was now looking for job, it was those people in that association. They were giving me ideas. Ohh my companies employing. Ohh. Have you tried this? Have you checked it? So networking beyond your cultural circle. Prep yourself in terms of your resume to know if you’re doing it well and another thing was attending career fairs to know what is required for your job. I’m happy some people help me and I’m so thankful for the people that helped me to navigate the Canadian environment.

Respondent Bandele provides an excellent measure of successful networking: when the alters in one’s network root for them when they are not around: “I rely heavily on networking because it is important to know the right people to talk to you so they can set you up nicely. In the work environment you can’t really depend on your hard work alone because they will bypass it very quickly. You need to have somebody that is rooting for you. Someone that’s speaking up for you when you’re not even in the room kind of thing.”

Pedulla and Pager [7] examine the role that social networks and job recruiters (called network alters) play in perpetuating racial inequalities in the American labor market from the job seekers’ perspective. Pedulla and Pager [7] note that most research on job applicants tends to focus on the end of their search process and does not isolate individual-level influences on networks. Access to social networks, access to a brokering agent assisting with network engagement (e.g., acting as a key screening mechanism, signaling the underlying quality and potential productivity of a job seeker), and access to company insiders do not guarantee the effectiveness of those network assets in producing job offers. Social homophily of networks and some workplaces can disadvantage historically excluded groups; social homogeneity is, moreover a reflection of the choices of immigrants to build networks from their ethnic communities, but also their rejection from other communities. The white middle class may desire diversity, but that rarely translates into diverse networks [30]. African-American network alters, whose referrals are neither automatic nor consistent, are often hesitant to refer BIPOC job seekers due to their own sense of job insecurity [7,31]. Informal networks of opportunity in fact sustain conditions of discrimination against BIPOC women. Social network participation appears race neutral for racialized women, but such networks are characterized by social and economic segregation that consistently disadvantage people from historically marginalized groups [7].

On the importance of socializing in new and unfamiliar environments, Aarifah explains: “So I did a star gathering which was sponsored again by the woman organization and it was actually an amazing event where we had [met] different kind[s] of people from different backgrounds…they were all immigrants and it was very nice…in fact we stayed till late night over there, we were talking to each other, we met new people, we came to know how they have moved here what kind of challenges or what kind of good experiences also they have.” Teniayo notes that networks help immigrant women overcome imposter syndrome and build solidarity and belonging: “I think it was great to build that network, not necessarily for a job referral, but it is nice to have a mechanism that might create an opening where they think you’re a good fit. It’s great having people who you can talk about the job struggles as women, who would understand what you’re talking about, what you’re feeling, you know, impostor syndrome. Or you struggle with various bits and pieces of the job, or how somebody else is navigating going on maternity leave. It’s great to feel that your presence is sort of missed.”

Ethel L. Mickey [18] notes that networking conferences are one method for women to expand their list of contacts and learn, however such events often have the underlying objective of promoting and consolidating the ‘feminist economic subject’ which Mickey defines as “the project of the self in the broader neoliberal entrepreneurial environment, individualization of career experiences with the aim to ‘fix’ a lack of human and social capital in individuals” [32]. Such networking events are a form of interventionism that, in fact, do very little to address and erode the structural inequalities in the workplace or stratified social systems because they are focused on individualizing the obligation to transform systems of gender inequality. Worse, in many cases, such networking conferences can “represent a commercialized enterprise that redefines women’s rights in terms of an individualist politics centered on lifestyle choices and personal consumer pleasures” where workers are expected to acts as “companies of one”, flexible and creative in “marketing themselves to locate and procure opportunities in a precarious market” [18,33,34].

Workers are encouraged to network to learn how to focus on inward transformation rather than dismantle invisibilized structural, institutional, and cultural barriers. Mickey [18] is narrowing in on the micro and meso dynamics wherein the failings of the labor system including its precarity, rates of unemployment, discrimination, lack of protective benefits, hierarchies, glass ceilings, walls, and floors sit in stasis as unaddressed structures while the agency of women workers becomes the focal point for action and interventions. She examines networking events and professional organizations that encourage women to develop self-reflection, self-discovery, personal empowerment, freedom, personal branding, and authenticity through the guidance of the self-help industry which, itself, frames the weak labor market as an unavoidable condition. She writes that “Networking is not only celebrated in the post-recession economy, but deemed necessary when competing for opportunities, with most sources finding that between 80 and 95 percent of jobs are found through networking” [18].

Critically re-assessing the protean career orientation, Mickey writes that the onus is placed on individual women, “from the moment they step foot in the office, to be exceptional and to create opportunities for themselves. The implication of this advice is that women can be agentic, self-serving actors who build their careers by working hard and making themselves noticeable. The speakers generally breeze over career obstacles, instead stressing women’s responsibility to accept, internalize, and overcome challenges through self-monitoring” [18]. Unable to resist the structures that keep them hemmed back in the job market and that make protean career orientation ascendant, racialized immigrant women embrace agency as a source of liberation. The regrettable truth is that their agency starts from ground zero and is driven by survival and necessity. Gopika discusses how being agentic requires one to put themselves out there and inquire:

Canadians are a very polite society, so a lot of things are just subtext. You know, I did find that the people I reached out to on LinkedIn and to grow my network, they were open and receptive if you framed it as not: “I need a favor from you, but I’d like to learn more about this.” So it was taking that approach and yeah, in terms of barriers it is, it is a problem right? Because, you’re coming to a country where you have a lot of skill set. You came to Canada based on these skill sets and suddenly someone tells you that you know? Ohh you should start at this position, because I mean just like you know the awesome people who came before me in this focus group, I did hear the same thing as well. You know, start from scratch. It’s very difficult and there’s a lot of external voices and fear when you move to a country and I will be, you know, very ignorant if I say that part of it...does not come from a place of privilege. Because when you’re moving to Canada, if you speak English properly or if you have, you know, a good command over the language, if you have a certain socioeconomic background, you can afford to wait for certain opportunities. But when you need to pay your rent, when you need to provide for your family, you can’t say that, you know I will hang on. So yes, so in the beginning I was very clear [about how to get a] leg get up, [a] good permanent job. I took up a more of a freelance opportunity because I used to hear the whole Canadian experience thing and I said let me just get a really, really good recommendation. So I gave 200% to that initial freelance and that really worked wonders because I had a local recommendation for the future opportunities that I would apply for.

From a similar point of view, Serena notes that people cannot act as references until they know a person and that immigrant women have to put themselves out there and become known: “Ohh you ask me the one of the biggest barriers I’ve faced is like references, working with references. But in power with that is your reference. So as a newcomer in Canada, it’s difficult to find someone to refer you. So no one is ready to refer you immediately without getting to know you. So they expect you to have a prior experience of prior reference from someone to get into it. References are also one of the key[s] even though you gave a great interview. Another focus group respondent, Dalia, mentions leveraging callbacks, even on accommodation grounds, as a kind of encouragement and signal that one is “on the right path”. Omaira talks about the need to get her network to work for her: “But you know later, [her coworker/ boss] apologized that in case how she said it didn’t come out right…But I got good support from them later on and I built good relationship with some of them that even up to now I can like call them for references and they would reference me. So… it’s not all that good…and it’s not bad. I can’t say they’re just in the middle. So sometimes…if you have like good luck you would get good references, good inputs or insight from them. But sometimes no. But right now that I’m trying to transition into.”

One of the central themes that emerges when we talked with racialized immigrant women is that they find it very challenging to have their educational credentials and professional experience recognized by prospective employers and that while they might have support from white women leaders, they often lack leadership representation. Carangio et al. [13] reported that racialized immigrant women in Australia feel that they have to be 2-3 times better than their white counterparts and that their qualifications are not fully recognized by employers. Women in this study felt isolated and excluded from important conversations, felt that they lacked an avenue to voice their frustrations, such as the lack of neutrality they perceived while attending professional networking events, and due to the fear that speaking up might lead to them being excluded from gatherings in the future [13]. One of our focus group participants, Adun, captures these fears: “Work experience was a challenge. Was a very big challenge. Once they saw that, Oh, you are experienced…within Canada…I don’t think we ever got any feedback. It was really challenging and eventually the jobs that we got were kind of through referrals and some jobs that [were] just needed.”

Policy Recommendations

Based on the preceding analysis, we recommend that governments at the municipal, provincial, and federal level and all relevant stakeholders focus on the following areas to redress the conditions that racialized immigrant women face in their networking efforts. One of the most effective forms of networking is the leveraging of social networks, the Internet, and mobile information and communication technologies to build farflung, diverse, and fragmented personal networks that revolve around autonomous individuals [3]. This form of networking runs counter to the natural tendencies of many immigrants from traditionally communitarian societies. They need help developing differentiated, non-overlapping social circles and the capacity to autonomously navigate and maneuver multiple, geographically separated, and sparser networks engaged in a variety of activities [3]. A crucial part of the equation is teaching racialized immigrant women confidence to put themselves in unfamiliar settings, and how and why to cold call. Individual and social outcomes result from the kinds of people in their networks and how those people are connected to each other [3].

This ‘networked individualism’ [3] does not occur outside of structural constraints. The drive to teach racialized immigrant women to ignore their lack of privilege, use intersectionality to their advantage, work harder, find ways to be better than everyone else, focus on possibilities, ‘refillable’ glasses, positive attitudes, narratives of achievement, and kindness, and overcome trauma neglects the lived realities of discrimination and lack of credential recognition that would allow them to be fully autonomous [18]. Barwick [30], for example, tells the story of an immigrant man who sought to move to a more affluent white suburb in Berlin but whose overtures to build connections with neighbors were repeatedly rebuffed. Ryan and Mulholland [6] find that when people perceive migrants’ to be transitory neighbors, they are less likely to forge social relationships with them.

There is agency and there are structures. Governments can help to lift these structures of constraint and bias by holding employers to higher standards of accountability regarding often highly arbitrary foreign credential devaluation and Canadian experience requirements, but also by helping racialized immigrant women learn through mentorship and training how to leverage the benefits of networked individualism and about the different kinds of social capital. Fragmented personal networks are rich because they have structural holes (“nonredundant contact”), weak ties, and involve distinct social circles and are a source of bridging social capital [10]. Bridging social capital activities expose job seekers to diverse information, autonomy, and control of resources. Fragmented personal networks also require higher cognitive costs of keeping social connections, less meaningful relationships, and social isolation which can be detrimental to an individual’s mental health. Immigrant women can be mentored to balance the benefits and drawbacks of networked individualism and networked fragmentation and taught how to meet more and diverse people in as many social and professional contexts as possible [2,3].

They can also help racialized immigrant women benefit from their existing bonding social capital in their close-knit social circles that support shared norms, informal controls, mutual trust, reciprocal obligations, and cooperation and that act as grounding forces through the turbulence of the job seeking process [10]. It is also important that they are taught to avoid the disadvantages of bonding social capital (e.g., in their cultural communities) including autonomy draining “loyalty, commitment, and conformity, leading to greater social pressure, repression of deviance, and limits to individual freedoms” [2,3]. Bonding social ties should not necessarily be seen as a hindrance to integration, sometimes bonding social ties are built by immigrants on the basis of ethnicity, but also on the basis of social class. Making new contacts and developing a local support network moreover takes time [30].

One of our respondents, Nafisa, captured the desire for bridging and bonding social capital and the benefits of networked individualism and communitarianism. She noted that she would like more opportunities to connect with people repeatedly to build relationships rather than through one-off events: “I think that there should be an opportunity where we can connect with people over and over again because if we meet for a person just for one time, I mean it is very hard to let them know what we are going through or what we want and what they are looking for that first relationship and build [them] with time… if someone is very lucky they might hit that shot but usually it takes time…if there is something where people can go on and on and again and there is some consistency, some regularity in that, that that would be more helpful.” This is supported by Barwick [30] who notes that when immigrants have places where they can run into other people on a regular basis can create a public familiarity that is the basis for the development of more durable ties. Our participant, Vignyatri, notes the importance of encouraging immigrant women to attend cultural events for networking: “I have attended…cultural events in my city. An advantage of that is you get to network more, you get to meet more people who have the same background as you. So you could make more friends and meet people who are going through the same struggles as you. It’s just nice to have a sounding board or someone who is also in the same journey as you. So yeah, I think it’s helpful [in those] ways.”

Another area where stakeholders can ease the networking challenges faced by racialized immigrant women is to better empower and train racialized network facilitators working in corporate, small business, and organizational settings [3]. On this point, our participant Teniayo reiterates the importance of exposing immigrant women to role models that understand career switches: “I do find my manager inspiring cause he was a medical doctor and then he switched from that to being senior manager of products. I find it fascinating and inspiring and great, you know, with how he switched careers and how he has grown up the rank. You know him being able to understand the nuances of switching career field and […] being able to give advice and tips like put yourself out there and things to do and stuff like that.”

Mentorship from in-group representatives is associated with positive outcomes in diverse domains as job search, career advancement, innovation, and health. On the other hand, cohesive personal networks in which the ego is deeply embedded in tightly knit, highly connected groups, generate closure or bonding social capital: they promote shared norms, informal controls, mutual trust, and reciprocal obligations, resulting in higher levels of cooperation and support within more homogenous groups. Yet, tightly knit personal networks can also be a source of excessive constraints on individual freedom, social control, and stifling pressure to conform to norms, aspects of what has been called ‘negative social capital’ [2].

Canada should look to the Networking Steps Model from Finland and empower settlement agencies to teach these steps which include: mindset development, goal-setting process, a network action plan (NAP), taking concrete steps to build human connections, engaging in super-connecting activities, following up and maintaining relationships, and adopting a never give up and be positive state of mind. Each of these steps are interrelated and interdependent2. We have found evidence that racialized immigrant women know that their self-motivation, drive, and selfconfidence are critical to their success. They need to be taught how to set realistic and achievable goals with intentional focus and to create concrete results for self-efficacy. They must also be taught how to build their network of acquaintances and how to follow-up and maintain those relationships. Participants of the MESH program noted that “networking was not as complicated as they used to think because now they have better understanding about methods and tools to widen their networks” [2,4]. In addition to creating opportunities for racialized immigrant women to network with people like them and different from them, networking stakeholders must also create spaces for racialized immigrant women to speak. When we hear racialized immigrant women through their own voices as they articulate their lived conditions, needs, and goals through their own points of view and reference points we help them profoundly to increase their potential to contribute to their work and their communities. We help to make this potential a concrete reality.

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