Career Difficulties and Strategies of Female Self- Initiated Expatriates and Self-Initiated Expatriate Couples in Switzerland
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Career difficulties and strategies of female self- initiated expatriates and self-initiated expatriate couples in Switzerland Doctoral Thesis presented to the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) by Nathalie Mancini-Vonlanthen From Alterswil (FR) in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Economics and Social Sciences Accepted by the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences on April 12, 2021, at the proposal of Prof. Eric Davoine, University of Fribourg (1st advisor) Prof. Markus Gmür, University of Fribourg (2nd advisor) Fribourg (Switzerland), 2021 Career difficulties and strategies of female self- initiated expatriates and self-initiated expatriate couples in Switzerland Doctoral Thesis presented to the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) by Nathalie Mancini-Vonlanthen From Alterswil (FR) in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Economics and Social Sciences Accepted by the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences on April 12, 2021, at the proposal of Prof. Eric Davoine, University of Fribourg (1st advisor) Prof. Markus Gmür, University of Fribourg (2nd advisor) Fribourg (Switzerland), 2021 The Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) does not intend either to approve or disapprove the opinions expressed in a thesis: they must be considered as the author’s own (decision of the Faculty Council of January 23, 1990). This publication benefited from the support of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: Life course perspectives, which is financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant number: 51NF40-160590). The author is grateful to the Swiss National Science Foundation for its financial assistance. Preface and acknowledgments This doctoral thesis started during a transition year as an accompanying partner of a self- initiated expatriate in the USA, during which I experienced the challenges of a long stay abroad. After returning to Switzerland, I officially started a PhD on the topic of expatriate couples under the supervision of Prof. Eric Davoine and funded by the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: Life course perspectives. My most sincere gratitude therefore goes to Prof. Eric Davoine for giving me the opportunity to write a PhD-thesis on international mobile couples and families, a topic which I find fascinating in all its facets. He has always given me the flexibility required for a mother of two little children, for which I am also very grateful. I am also thankful for his confidence in my research and writing capabilities and his continuous support throughout the PhD-journey. In the NCCR LIVES, I had the chance to be part of IP206, an interdisciplinary group of researchers led by Prof. Nicky Le Feuvre. In this context I could benefit from fruitful and interesting presentations, discussions and seminars. Therefore, I would like to thank the IP206 of NCCR LIVES for our enriching collaboration and for the many stimulating discussions related to the PhD-project. I would like to thank especially Prof. Nicky Le Feuvre for her support throughout the PhD-journey and for her help to write two manuscripts. I feel that if all women with little children had the same support and back-up I had, there would be much higher percentages of working-mothers in Switzerland. I would also like to mention the numerous doctoral workshops offered by the doctoral program of NCCR LIVES, thanks to which I was able to improve my methodological and theoretical competencies. In addition to that, in 2017, I received a 120%-salary grant for one year that helped me to finance the childcare for my daughter. In this regard, I would like to thank Prof. Nicky Le Feuvre and Dr. Sabine Kradolfer, who helped me formulating the grant proposal. The NCCR LIVES also gave me the opportunity to co-organize two international research seminars on the topic of expatriation and migration, in which various experts in the field like Prof. Akram Al Ariss, Prof. Laura Merla, Dr. Olivier Merignac and Prof. Yvonne Riaño participated. I would also like to thank Dr. Romina Angie Seminario Luna for her valuable help in co-organizing two seminars. My research evolved in a dynamic research environment, where I could profit from the help and stimulus from other PhD-students working on a similar topic. My sincere gratitude goes to Dr. Claudio Ravasi, Dr. Xavier Salamin and Clelia Rossi for our exchanges on the topic of international mobility or migration. I particularly thank Dr. Xavier Salamin for always being very helpful and providing me with methodological and theoretical support for my first article. He showed me how to apply correspondence analyses to conduct an unusual literature review on a specific topic and revised the first draft of the manuscript. The final article “Spouses and families of expatriates: A systematic literature review by correspondence analysis based on semantic segments” was published as LIVES WORKING PAPER in April 2016 and was presented in a condensed form at the European Academy of Management (EURAM) conference in 2017. Furthermore, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of EURAM and the LIVES WORKING PAPER series, who provided helpful comments that notably improved the i paper, and the renowned scientists in the expatriate management track of EURAM showing interest in my research and asking questions after the presentation. For my second article I could use some interviews made by Sophie Falk with which I was able to perform a secondary qualitative analysis. In this regard, I would like to thank Sophie Falk for providing us with all the rich audio data. This resulted in the second article, “French female expatriates facing a different work/care regime in neighboring Switzerland,” which was presented at two international conferences (EURAM 2017 and AGRH 2017). I thereby thank the anonymous reviewers of EURAM and AGRH for their useful comments and the track audience of EURAM and AGRH for their questions and encouraging comments. For my third article I conducted interviews with highly-educated self-initiated couples with at least one of the spouses having a PhD and currently residing in Switzerland. I found that all the couples were experiencing a transition phase of high uncertainty during which they had to decide whether pursuing an academic career that implied further international mobility, or modifying their career plan and acquire skills to compete in the Swiss job market to attain residential stability. I would like to thank all the anonymous participants of the survey for letting me see their situation through their eyes. Through their open answers, I received rich qualitative data that was the base for my third and fourth articles. Furthermore, I would like to thank Prof. Eric Widmer who explained me conceptual frameworks of family and couple sociology to enhance the quality of the third article. The paper "Between Stability and Change: Employment- Seeking Strategies of Self-Initiated Expatriate Couples” was presented at the EURAM conference 2018 and is currently in preparation for submission to an international journal. I would also like to thank all people who helped me to find participants of the interviews, especially Dr. Gina Potarca, Dr. Chantal Camenisch Loretan, Dr. Claudio Ravasi, Dr. Anna Rohe, Dr. Sabine Kradolfer, Laila Pirovino, and Dr. Stefano Mancini. Furthermore, I would like to thank my recent colleagues Dr. Linda Mettler, Dr. Bertrand Audrin and Dr. Laura Massera for our conversations and discussions during coffee breaks and doctoral seminars of the Chair HRO. Their humor and jokes graced the last phases of my PhD-journey. Finally, I would like to thank all those who supported me throughout these years and have made this PhD possible. If you start a PhD with little children, especially if one is often ill, this would not be possible without a good social support network. First of all, I would like to thank my husband Dr. Stefano Mancini for his priceless and encouragement in good and bad times of this PhD. His presence and enthusiasm were highly appreciated throughout the process. I thank my mother-in-law Silvana Pallotta for coming from Italy and living with us for 3 months after my second maternity leave. My sincere gratitude goes to my friend since kindergarten, Simone Brülhart, and my brother Michael Vonlanthen for the occasional help with babysitting, as well as to my sister-in-law Miriam Aebischer for proof-reading some chapters of this thesis. Moreover, I would like to thank my parents Beat and Rosemarie Vonlanthen for their belief in my capabilities and support throughout my academic path. Without their help in taking care of my children when daycare was no option any longer due to numerous stays in the children hospital, I would not have been able to continue the thesis. Contrarily to most expatriate couples that were the subject of the thesis (who live in a foreign country without grand-parents), I had loving grand-parents living close by. This PhD-thesis is therefore dedicated to my parents. ii Table of Contents Preface and acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. i Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................. iii List of Tables