Professional Integration of Immigrants Qualified in Information Technology (IT) in Quebec City: Countering the Myths, the Immigrant Perspective

While massive and illegal migratory flows make headlines in Europe, countries such
as Canada rely more on skilled immigration. Professional integration in Canada,
and more specifically in Quebec, has attracted the interest of a large number of
authors. These authors highlight the various difficulties that immigrants face in
this regard, despite the constant efforts of public actors to adjust welcoming and
integration policies.

In the information technology (IT) sector in the Quebec’s capital region, economic
growth, labour scarcity, and the growing need for specialized labour are encouraging
employers, supported by regional organizations, to recruit skilled workers at
the international level. A large proportion of immigrants specialized in IT therefore
arrive in the Quebec’s region via this mechanism and actors in the field emphasize
their successful integration into the workplace. However, there is one category of
immigrants, trained abroad in IT, that are also trying to integrate into the sector.
They have not arrived by this usual method of recruitment and hence pass under the
radar of regional and sectoral statistics. This exploratory study reveals their existence
and focuses upon the conditions that are specific to their professional integration.

This article highlights the obstacles faced in their efforts to take up a first IT job,
taking into account their skills acquired overseas, obstacles related to weaknesses
in language proficiency in the workplace or gaps in employers’ human resource
management practices, and differences in occupational classifications. The
immigrants encountered in our study put in place back-to-school and de-skilling
strategies that would facilitate their entry into a first job in IT. However, these
actions do not lead to an optimal and satisfactory insertion of these workers and,
in fact, generally lead to over-qualification. Furthermore, the analysis allows us
to understand that the workers’ generalist profiles create obstacles because the
needs of employers in the region are in fact specialized.

Keywords: employment integration, qualified immigrants, information technology,
sector in strong demand, Quebec.