Migrant millennials struggle despite superior work ethic

Despite having a better work ethic, refugee and immigrant millennials (RIM) still struggle to get good jobs in New Zealand, a study has found.

A “RIM @ work” study by AUT University Professor of Diversity Edwina Pio conducted 150 conversations and interviews with highlevel managers and focus groups with millennials, parents and educators.

It found that RIMs had a “different” work ethic — they took fewer sickies and breaks and were not clockwatchers.

Migrant labour was here to stay, Pio said, and many employers did not realise how much they would have to depend on it in the future.

Millennials in New Zealand made up nearly a third, or 32.7 per cent, of the population in 2013. The population of Asian millennials, who represented 8 per cent of the generational cohort in 2001, increased to 15 per cent by 2013.

They are expected to make up the majority of the workforce by 2020.

“Yet there are differences in terms of employment levels based on millennials’ ethnicity,” Pio said.

“Work is one of the single most important needs of RIM, however many are unemployed, underemployed or engaged in unpaid family-care work.”

They were also over-represented in low-paying positions in hospitality, construction and cleaning.

“They may also be perceived as low-hanging fruit ripe for exploitation

Many are unemployed, underemployed or engaged in unpaid family-care work. Professor Edwina Pio

by organisations focused on shortterm, quick profits,” Pio said.

“While RIM may have interesting accents, which don’t wash away in a laundromat, knowledge of idiomatic English and Kiwiology are essential in progressing in New Zealand workplaces.”

Communication was key, and voluntary work could also help mitigate migrant minorities out of isolation and loneliness.

“Networking must be constant and education is seen as a way out of poverty and the pathway to success.

“Learn Kiwi ways of speaking in terms of phraseology and display sensitivity to issues such as age, religion, marital status and rainbow people.”

Pio said hidden bias, subtle work- place discrimination, unconscious and implicit bias and stereotyping could “work both ways”, with migrants and host country individuals “creating micro-generosities and kindness or micro-oppressions in everyday organisational and societal life”.

“This may be particularly evident when ethnic minority women jostle and contend for positions of power and status in organisations, thus challenging the implementation of diversity and complicating simple dichotomies . . . such as ethnic and non-ethnic, migrant and nonmigrant.”

Her study, however, concluded New Zealand to be “a hundred times better” than many other Western countries in embracing diversity.