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Valuing diversity: guidance for labour market integration of migrants

weak understanding of the receiving culture, lack of awareness of their own
values and attitudes and, further, lack of understanding of how these contrasts
influence their motivation to pursue a career.
From an individual standpoint, guidance can be seen as generating value for
people with migrant background by responding to three needs:
(a) increasing their knowledge of the receiving culture, language, education,
social security and health systems, labour market and other aspects to
develop the basic skills and knowledge that allow them to cope with their
new reality;
(b) making structured career planning possible by increasing awareness of their
own skills, preferences, values, motivations and by making them aware of
the differences between their culture of origin and the receiving culture, i.e.
fostering individual reflexivity in career planning;
(c) increasing the motivation of individuals to pursue a career, allowing them to
construct a personal narrative that integrates the several stages of their lives
into a coherent pattern that can be followed up by a critical and (perceived
as) positive decision.

This perspective of value creation directly reflects the contribution of
guidance methods to other inputs: a person’s autonomy in integrating into the
labour market (Niles et al., 2008); the necessary knowledge and skills to do it;
appropriate behaviours to achieve it (using techniques for job search,
presentation, and social skills); the personal awareness to think critically about
the future; the emotional ability to make one’s experiences positively relevant for
the next step.
The second important methodological development is the integration of
cross-cultural competences in guidance processes. It departs from the
acknowledgement that there is a variety of culturally-based perceptions of career
development, due to three factors:
(a) practitioners frequently do not share the same culture as their migrant
clients, or have scarce knowledge of it;
(b) connected with this there is the effect of cultural stereotypes and
discriminative behaviours in practitioner activity;
(c) culturally-based assumptions in career development theories, methodologies
and instruments used to assess, advise and enable reflection and planning
of/with clients.
Several authors have suggested methods to overcome these challenges and
generate more culturally aware practices. They include:

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