Bente Abrahamsen

Employment Status and Commitment to Work in Professions

The main question in the article is to what degree underemployed and overemployed professionals are committed to the profession and the organization which employs them. Ten professional groups are included in the study and more than one in four respondents are either underemployed or overemployed. The results show that overemployment affects commitment to the profession and the organization negatively. Unexpectedly, underemployed professionals do not report weaker commitment either to the profession or to the organization compared to colleagues who work an equal but preferred number of hours.

Ethnic Minority Students’ Career Expectations in Prospective Professions: Navigating between Ambitions and Discrimination

This study sheds light on how ethnic minority students in Norway seek to navigate occupational opportunities after graduating from professional bachelor programmes. Students’ career ambitions and career expectations are investigated. The study adopts a comparative approach and includes students of Asian origin and western minority students as well as majority students. The findings show that ethnic minorities have higher career ambitions than majority students, but their career expectations are not correspondingly high. The study identifies ethnicity both as a resource (ethnic capital) and as an obstacle in the pursuit of a professional career. Structural disadvantages such as perceived discrimination seem to curb the utility of ethnic capital in capitalising on occupational opportunities, particularly for managerial positions. Ethnicity as a resource seems to play a role among both Asian and western minority students, and appears particularly strong in the development of career ambitions and in the efforts to pursue educational qualifications.