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Valuing diversity: guidance for labour market integration of migrants

The policy focus on lifelong and life-wide support to career transitions stems
from a substantial paradigm shift in the past few decades in the way in which
guidance can effectively achieve its purposes.
From a model of guidance and counselling fundamentally based on
matching talents to jobs (as in Parsons, 1909; Williamson, 1939; Holland, 1973;
1985), guidance has moved to a dynamic, holistic approach that considers in
greater depth how a person’s career path evolves and the variety of roles she/he
plays in the course of her/his life (Super, 1980; 1990; Savickas, 1997). This
paradigm shift is largely due to the emergence of more unstable labour markets,
with higher female participation, cultural diversity and longer worker lives, which
raised new theoretical and practical challenges.
Nevertheless, matching models still have notable value and have been
significantly refined (Holland, 1985; 1994), providing an easy-to-grasp rationale to
organise guidance services, especially in the public sector. Matching models use
standardised methods to assess individuals’ characteristics; they are compatible
with a range of occupations, providing affordable and quick tools to support
career guidance. They also make it easier to define practitioner skills, their range
of responsibilities and the deployment of a set of work tools (assessment tests,
labour market information).
One of the challenges of matching approaches lies in the fact that labour
markets are highly volatile, offering many unstable, temporary jobs with no clear
development prospects, disabling the idea of steady, vocationally-based careers.
For migrants, not only are these problems are more acute, but they face more
complex challenges, such as linguistic barriers, lack of understanding of receiving
cultures, weak social networks, different work cultures and discrimination. The
low visibility and consequent underemployment of skills, together with recognition
problems for foreign qualifications, further limits the possibility of directly
matching traits to placements. The perspectives for career advancement of
migrants can often be bleak.
Donald Super’s influential work made a significant break with the linear
vision of careers. Traditionally, career was identified with occupation, neglecting
the successive changes in perspective, attitude and expectations that individuals
undergo, as they evolve through their lives. Super (1980) introduced the idea of a
life-space in which individuals can assume different roles (such as student,
parent, worker), which acquire varying importance according to each stage of life.
Super also accounted for the fact that life-roles can be simultaneous, and,
depending on how much knowledge an individual has about them, how much
time is spent in performing them and the degree of commitment with each role,
they acquire more or less importance (or salience). The salience of roles can vary
according to gender, social-economic background and, important for the present

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