An Exploration of Migration and Work Decisions, Values, and Subjective Well-Being of Skilled Immigrants in Australia

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the La Trobe Business School, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia.

This thesis explores the skilled immigration experience, enhancing our understanding of the factors influencing emigration decisions and the impact of these experiences on the self-concepts of migrants. Extant migration research explains aggregate migration patterns by push-pull theories focussed on economic motivations of migrants and fails to explore alternative motivating factors or their impact on individuals. An original process model drawing on studies of the self, personal values, and subjective wellbeing traces the impact of core values on the choices of individuals to emigrate from the home country, their assessment of their post-immigration outcomes, and their subjective well-being. The research employs a phenomenological design incorporating semi-structured interviews of 29 skilled immigrants to Australia. Storytelling and data visualisation techniques are used to identify individual claims of values and the impact of those values on subjective well-being, contributing a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon of skilled migration. The findings suggest a link between the subjective well-being (feelings of contentment, stress and distress) of these skilled immigrants and consistency between core values and life project choices and outcomes. Immigrants who made emigration decisions and experienced post-immigration outcomes that were consistent with core values, exhibited positive subjective well-being which supported a coherent self-concept. This study contributes important findings about the human experience of skilled immigration. By separately examining work expectations and the reason for emigration and the independence of emigration satisfaction and post-immigration employment satisfaction it demonstrates the existence of a wider range of migration motivators. By identifying the distinction between value consistent choices and value consistent outcomes the research incorporates unintended outcomes into the factors to be considered by researchers. Further, it introduces the relationship between value consistency and subjective well-being as a part of a new process model for understanding the impact of the migration experience on the maintenance of a coherent self.