Unraveling the Dynamics of Immigrant Engineers’ Full-Utilization in Australia

The study aims to improve our understanding of the full-utilization of immigrant engineers by answering three research questions: 1) what are the economic and social costs of the underutilization of immigrant engineers, 2) what factors determine immigrant engineers’ employment, and 3) what might be potential solutions to tackle with their underutilization? We adopt the intersectionality theory to observe a rich set of social factors influential in immigrant engineers’ underutilization by using 188 surveys and 14 interviews of immigrant engineers living in Australia. This article concludes with the findings’ theoretical and policy implications, followed by suggestions for future studies.