Jelena ZikicSoodabeh Mansoori2025-04-102025-04-102024-08-072025-04-10https://hdl.handle.net/10315/42721This qualitative study employs a grounded theory approach to explore the lived experiences of skilled migrants in Canada who engage in alternative careers. The study investigates identity work and meaning-making processes of career actors who perceive alternative career options as “beginning again.” Through 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews, the findings identify three distinct alternative career pathways: provisional, experimental, and reformist; each characterized by a unique form of identity work and accompanying types of meaning-making. Each path provides distinctive insights into how skilled migrants cope with, and adapt to, the mismatches between their skills and new job demands, challenging and redefining their professional identities. Additionally, it highlights how each career pathway may shape migrants’ subjective well-being. This study advances the existing literature on major career transitions, specifically skilled migrant career trajectories inside local organizations, by highlighting how they reconstruct new professional identities and derive meaning in contexts that often fall below their qualifications and career aspirations. This study extends existing research on employability and career sustainability by integrating the dynamic processes of identity negotiation and meaning-making in the face of career transitions. It also builds on the existing meaning-making literature by highlighting the career narratives of those who must search for new meanings while pursuing “less than ideal” career opportunities. Finally, the findings provide practical implications related to outcomes of alternative career opportunities on migrant career success and, more broadly, for employers and policymakers.Author owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.Electronic Thesis or Dissertation2025-04-10Alternative Career PathwaysIdentity WorkMeaningful WorkSkilled Migrants' Career Transitions