Charles P Chen

This book examines a research study that describes the critical interaction between ethnicity and career development in lives of Chinese-Canadian young adults. Through an empirical inquiry following a qualitative research framework, the book provides an in-depth foundation for the scarcely researched area of career development of Chinese-Canadians, engendering original new knowledge contributing to the interdisciplinary studies of vocational and career psychology and cross-cultural psychology. Drawn from several major career development theories and other pertinent literature, the research participants' dynamic and complex processes involved in career choice and decision-making are identified and analysed.

This book is concerned with trainee professionals and their search for meaning through the determined and creative pursuit of a cross-cultural career transition. Adopting a qualitative research framework, the book describes the career experience of professional trainees from non-Western cultures who have chosen to develop their careers in the West. It examines the process of the initial consideration of change, the exploring of options (including whether to emigrate) and how the many issues and challenges of adapting to the socio-cultural environment of the host country were met. In addition it examines how the process provided the trainee professionals involved with greater self-understanding and how as a result they were able to further consider their future career plans. The book then highlights the implications of these experiences for theory, research and practice.