New research on Florida Finns from International Business project

Raitis, J., Harikkala-Laihinen, R., Nummela, N., & Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, E. (2023). From Working Hard to Being Hard Working: The Maintenance and Mobilization of Cultural Capital among Finnish Migrants in Florida. In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Migration in International Business (pp. 183-203). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

In this study we addressed the question of how migrants can draw from and utilize their cultural capital in their new host country in the domain of work. While there seems to be more research on migrants rejecting or devaluing their distinctive home culture characteristics, we presented an opposite type of case, where the migrants successfully utilized and even emphasized their cultural capital facilitating their adaptation. Our empirical findings indicate that contextual-level cultural match, a historically built group image, and activities of and in the migrant community may facilitate and guide migrant workers in their adaptation processes and in constructing a bicultural identity, leveraging both their home and host cultures. Such an approach does not require the migrants to change or reject their heritage culture but rather to strategically select and enforce some aspects of it that are most fitting, usable, or positively distinguishing in their host environment.  

More info from the publisher: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-38886-6_9