A cross-cultural research on the employment of migrants: Social representations of job seekers in Poland and Turkey

Abstract

Aim: The main aim of the study is to reveal the social representations of local job seekers towards employment of migrants who are a part of the labor market in Poland and Turkey. As social representations have been one of the crucial and preferred concepts to find out individuals' perceptions of any subject, determining the direction of social representations of Turkish and Polish job seekers (positive or negative) and comparing the revealed social representations between Turkish and Polish participants are other aims of this study. Method: 30 participants (15 Turkish and 15 Polish) between 22-30 ages from Turkey and Poland have taken part in this research based on the maximum variation sampling, and the first part of the social representations survey instrument (the part which consists of the free associations form) proposed by Tsoukalas (2006) has been used to reach out to participants' representations. The data has been analyzed and presented in tables for each country through content analysis and the results have been discussed based on the comparisons. Findings: The results have shown that Turkish and Polish participants created the same number of groups (45 groups each) in total. The similarities between social representations of Turkish and Polish participants are higher than the differences, however, it is possible to assume that Turkish participants tend to provide more negative social representations regarding the employment of migrants. Conclusions: The social representations of Turkish participants about the employment of migrants refer to situations that related to “economic, job market, social, emotional, psychological, cultural, different challenges during daily life for locals and migrants, and some positive sides/contributions to migrants of being a migrant in the country”. The social representations of Polish participants about the employment of migrants refer to situations that related to “procedural and formal issues, social and cultural aspects, challenges regarding the economy and job market, emotional reactions, outputs of migrants, and some positive sides/contributions of migrants to society as being a migrant in the country such as diversity and some other positive effect of migrants”.