Careers in cities: An interdisciplinary space for advancing the contextual turn in career studies

Abstract

With careers increasingly taking place within and between cities, this article maps the territory for research and theory on careers in cities. Cities present a microcosm for advancing a systemic understanding of people’s careers over time and in relation to broader issues. We acknowledge cities’ multilayered contexts by identifying six spheres—locality and networks, material infrastructure, economic activities, non-work, virtual reconfiguration, and nexus of social change. The interplay between careers and these city spheres informs intertwined phenomena such as well-being, mobility, and migration. To guide further research, our framework distinguishes two meta-theoretical perspectives. An entity perspective examines causal relationships across levels, analyzing how urban characteristics explain career-related phenomena, and vice versa. A constructionist perspective examines how people’s construal of careers in cities draws on cultural repertoires about work, non-work life, and the city, including its social, symbolic, and material aspects. We use the framework to discuss contributions of the five articles of this special issue. A career lens can contribute to our understanding of cities being sources of both stability and change. With cities currently facing significant disruptions, there has never been a more appropriate time for careers researchers to incorporate the city as context.

Keywords

careers cities economic development migration quality of life urban policymaking

Introduction

This special issue on careers in cities aims to speak to the ‘contextual turn’ in career studies (Arthur, 2008; Barley, 1989; Collin, 1997; Gunz et al., 2011; Mayrhofer et al., 2007; Tams and Arthur, 2010). This ‘turn’ reflects career scholars’ interest in a wide range of occupational and cultural settings (e.g., Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Baruch, 2015; Cohen and Duberley, 2015; Inkson et al., 1997; Kunda et al., 2002; Mitra, 2015). This interest emerged as firms began to take a more transactional view of employment relationships (Cappelli, 1999), so that workers could no longer rely on a single organization for their security of employment and development over time. In response to these changes, career scholars have sought to illuminate the wider space within which careers unfold (Gunz et al., 2011; Mayrhofer et al., 2007). Yet, cities have so far remained an unexplored and invisible terrain in career studies.

Cities are an important context for advancing knowledge about careers. Careers describe people’s movement through work and employment experiences over time (Arthur et al., 1989). This movement is increasingly taking place within and between cities. Like careers, cities are a cultural construct of society; they provide a context where individuals develop careers. More than half the people in the world live in urban areas, rising to above 80% in high-income regions and growing fastest in low-income regions (The World Bank, 2020). Though definitions of urban areas differ according to national circumstances, they have traditionally been distinguished from rural areas based on the assumption that urban areas ‘provide a different way of life and usually a higher standard of living than are found in rural areas’ (United Nations Statistics Division, 2017). Yet, this distinction has become problematic in industrialized countries. Hence, urban and rural areas are also being distinguished in terms of their relative population density, where urban areas with more than 100,000 inhabitants are conventionally considered a city (United Nations, 2019).

While research on careers in cities informs knowledge about the ways by which careers are implicated in contexts of social complexity (Gunz et al., 2011; Kennedy and Chan, 2020; Mayrhofer et al., 2007), producing such knowledge also presents challenges. First, on a substantive level, the city eschews any singular definition. Since cities are a dynamic form of human social organization, their interplay with careers is multilayered, recursive, and subject to change. To illustrate, this interplay involves several aspects: collaboration with partners and co-presence with strangers form key aspects of urban careers. The collaboration aspect is grounded in cities being a nexus of economic, administrative, social, and symbolic practices that involve close social interactions over time within and across fields, such as commerce, education, the arts, and city governance and public services (Frey and Zimmer, 2001; Glaeser, 2011). The co-presence aspect results from work and career-making in cities being situated in a context of high population density and physical proximity. Cities afford an awareness of others, who are typically no more than strangers, but whose co-presence nonetheless contributes to identity formation and openness to fresh ideas (Florida, 2002a; Grabher et al., 2018; Sennett, 2018). Next, stability arises from careers being structured by a city’s material and technological infrastructure and powerful actors, including government, public service providers, developers, investors, and the commercial sector, who are committed to material, social, and symbolic infrastructures. Jointly, they determine the use of limited resources, delineate occupational divisions and boundaries of social class along geographical lines, and crystallize systems of social and economic separation that structure individual careers. Lastly, change emerges for careers from cities being strategic actors in a dynamic global economy, where they compete for economic success and cultural prestige (Kotler et al., 1993), while also being hotspots where diverse actors explore issues of livability, economic and social inequalities, migration, and sustainability (Cook and Swyngedouw, 2012; Rousseau et al., 2019; Sassen, 2012). These themes prompt our first aim of providing scholars with a map for orienting studies of careers in cities in relation to their multilayered and changing intersections.

Second, on a meta-theoretical level, career studies do not provide a universally agreed upon conceptual framework for studying careers in context. Career studies have developed against the backdrop of varied academic disciplines, each with their own epistemological, philosophical, and methodological traditions (Arthur, 2008; Collin and Young, 1986; Khapova and Arthur, 2011). Prior literature suggests two perspectives on careers in contexts. An outside/in perspective emphasizes context as an external system or environment in which individual careers are embedded (e.g., Baruch, 2015; Gunz et al., 2011; Mayrhofer et al., 2007). In contrast, an inside/out perspective sees context through the perspective of people’s construction of careers in relation to their lived experiences (Chudzikowski et al., 2020; Cohen et al., 2004; Cohen and Duberley, 2015; Collin, 1997). These perspectives make different assumptions about the nature of the world and of human beings (ontology). In turn, these assumptions shape researchers’ choice of methodology and produce different understandings. Clarifying these fundamental assumptions is particularly acute in an emergent field, as represented by this special issue. While the field’s rich interdisciplinary vocabulary and diverse perspectives afford fresh insights about careers and cities, there is the risk that it produces an eclectic body of knowledge, with limited cumulative impact on policy. There is also the risk that it fails to inform the broader contextual turn in careers studies. Hence, these diverging perspectives inform this article’s second aim of developing a framework that helps scholars position their research about careers in cities in relation to these assumptions about the nature of social reality, while also enabling them to engage in productive dialogue with scholarship that adopts a diverging perspective.

Addressing these two aims contributes in the following ways. The map of intersections between careers and cities and the framework of ontological perspectives enables readers to locate the other five articles contained in this special issue. They each contribute to larger empirical and theoretical conversations about cities as a context for careers. Our map and framework are also devices for orienting future research. They are intended as tools for identifying the connections, differences and gaps in available knowledge bases, from which promising directions for further inquiry can be discerned. Lastly, both can provide a canvas for conversations at the intersection of different theoretical assumptions, and about the practical application of research for individual career development, organizations, and policymaking.

This article is organized as follows. We map key dimensions at the intersection of cities and careers. Then, we outline a framework of different ways of conceptualizing careers in cities, which we illustrate with the five articles included in this special issue. Finally, we consider the ways by which research about careers in cities contributes to individuals, organizations, and policymaking.

How cities and careers intersect

In the relationship between cities and careers, people experience a city in its complex, multidimensional, multilayered, and dynamic totality. This context is typically described in terms of core elements. For example, Frey and Zimmer (2001) suggest that the concept of urban is constituted by three broad elements: ecological (e.g., population size, density), economic (e.g., non-agricultural diversity of activity, agglomerative economies, commuting patterns), and social (e.g., infrastructure, entertainment options, crime, environment). Elaborating this approach, we propose that careers in cities can be understood through the ways by which careers intersect a city’s multiple spheres—locality and networks, material/technological infrastructure, economic activity, non-work life, virtual reconfiguration, and nexus of change, as illustrated by Figure 1.

Figure 1.

The multiple spheres of careers within a city.

City spheres

Locality and networks are defining features of cities and careers within them. Although city locations emerged from within unique historical and national circumstances, cities also derive their meaning from their networks to other places. Global cities, such as New York, Dubai, or Tokyo, are powerful nodes in the global economic network. Global cities are regularly ranked and seen to ‘outperform the rest of the cities in attracting and retaining qualified talent’ (Kearney, 2019: 1). Primate cities are disproportionately larger than other cities and urban areas in that country or region, and exist in some but not all countries (Jefferson, 1939). Secondary cities are regional urban centers that may be unknown outside the region. As population size and status of a city are associated with its diversity of economic activity, categorizations of city types indicate different opportunities and constraints for careers (as we elaborate later in relation to the sphere of economic activity).

The classification of cities as attractive places to work indicates that a career’s host city is related to other urban areas and rural localities, some of which form part of a person’s personal network. Thus, careers in cities involve physical movements and virtual connections to and from other localities (Alacovska et al., 2021). Moreover, potential movement to other localities may also figure in the evaluation and imagination of one’s career (Montanari et al., 2021). Careers in cities are undertaken by city folk and by commuters. Careers in cities can uproot people from their native place, especially when they work in large, global cities. As global cities attract foreign investment, concentrate economic and management activities, and are nodes in global business and cultural networks (Sassen, 1988, 2012), they have high labor demands for both skilled and low-wage migrants, including foreign immigrants (Foner, 1998; Tams and Arthur, 2007). Thus, cities’ positioning in relation to other localities invites attention to people’s geographical career choices in pursuit of sustainable careers over time, as illustrated by three articles of this special issue (Alacovska et al., 2021; Guo and Baruch, 2021; Montanari et al., 2021).

The material and technological infrastructure of a city (e.g., land use, built environment, water, air, electrical grids, transportation, communications and distribution networks, environmental quality) is traditionally seen to improve its living conditions and economic vitality. Linking careers and cities’ material and technological sphere is consistent with the progressive agenda of modernism, which emerged in the mid-1800s when cities began to tackle public health issues arising from rapid industrialization and large-scale migration through civil engineering (Sennett, 2018). A modernist lens attends to the ways by which the technological and spatial evolution of cities, in comparison to rural areas, shapes careers (Hughes, 1958; Whyte, 1956; see also Setor and Joseph, 2020). For example, a city’s level of congestion, technological infrastructure, and environmental pollution have a profound influence on quality of life, as do the time spent commuting, the ability to work from home, and overall health.

Even though a city’s material and technological infrastructure may be taken for granted, it structures and stabilizes social, administrative, and commercial interactions, and thereby careers. Its physical configuration is more enduring than business organizations, who can more easily relocate. In company towns, like Wolfsburg, Germany, home to Volkswagen, organizations design the city’s material infrastructure to control workers and institutionalize career scripts, with housing and transport systems designed to reproduce workplace hierarchies (Moonesirust and Brown, 2019; see also Garner, 1992; Roy, 2007). In addition, a city’s material infrastructure forms part of its ‘city identity’ (Jones and Svejenova, 2017; Montanari et al., 2021). Thus, the city’s material and technological sphere is increasingly being managed as part of its marketing and branding to place it on the map of a global economy (Kotler et al., 1993; Lucarelli and Berg, 2011). For example, cities adopting the ‘creative city’ brand (e.g., Austin, Berlin) may use urban regeneration to attract highly talented and mobile workers (Grodach, 2013; Haynes and Langley, 2014). Similarly, ‘ecocities’ fundamentally reconfigure the material and technological infrastructure of urban areas, and thereby also transform the meanings of work and career within them (Joss et al., 2013). Cities wishing to identify as ‘smart cities’ focus on technology, resource efficiency, and sustainability to strengthen their innovative identity. Two articles in this special issue illustrate different perspectives on the relationship between a city’s identity and careers. Montanari et al. (2021) observe that material aspects of a city’s identity can form part of creative workers’ assessment of career success. In contrast, Curseu et al. (2021) argue that the focus of smart cities on technology and material infrastructure fails to manage social and career-related consequences.

Economic activities of a city are of central relevance for careers and are implicated in the different career profiles observed across city and rural settings (Setor and Joseph, 2020). Though economic activities are not bounded by the administrative boundaries of a single city, local city-based interactions are central for services, commercial activities, and sectors, such as finance, start-up business, and cultural and creative production, where quality and risk of production are managed through repeated working relationships with other proximal actors (Glaeser, 2011; Grabher, 2002). Members of these organizational fields may also collaborate in the provision of training, networking, innovation and marketing/branding activities (Grodach, 2013; Kotler et al., 1993; Lucarelli and Berg, 2011). These organizational fields can thus be understood as career ecosystems (Baruch, 2015; Baruch and Rousseau, 2019). A city’s field-specific career ecosystem both enables and constrains careers (Blair et al., 2003; Dunning, 2018; Ekinsmyth, 2002; Guo and Baruch, 2021). On the one hand, large cities’ ‘diversified portfolio of employers’ (Glaeser, 2011: 71) enable individuals to gain a greater range of career experiences, and build networks which transcend organizations (Tams and Arthur, 2010). Working in spatial proximity facilitates a person’s awareness of, and interactions with, co-workers, business partners, professional associations and networks, educational institutions, and other stakeholders. Large cities also open up niche or specialist roles that are typically absent from secondary cities (Kozhevnikov, 2021). On the other hand, the density and diversity of cities can have negative effects, creating higher competition for positions (Guo and Baruch, 2021; Kozhevnikov, 2021) and more precarious work arrangements, where workers assume a greater burden of risk (Blair et al., 2004; Ekinsmyth, 2002; Petriglieri et al., 2019). Thus, people’s participation in a city’s career ecosystem through project collaborations, shared learning and knowledge creation sustains their career-making and social status over time (Cnossen et al., 2020; Grabher, 2002; Hughes, 1958; Ryan et al., 2011).

A city’s non-work sphere comprises its everyday public life (e.g., streets, places, parks, public buildings, shops, cafes, restaurants, public transport), education, cultural and sports events, and engagement in political, religious, and civic activities. This sphere constitutes people’s lived experience of cities (Jacobs, 1961; Sennett, 2018; Tuan, 1977), as well as the worldviews and values that distinguish urban and rural lives (Frey and Zimmer, 2001). Urban experiences, worldviews, and values are enacted through citizens’ everyday co-presence, co-awareness, interactions, and experiences. Thereby, these social and symbolic spheres shape people’s non-work attachments and notions of work–life balance, which are implicated in sustainable career-making over time (De Vos and Van der Heijden, 2015; Lee et al., 2011; Mitra, 2015). Also, a city’s non-work sphere brings people in the presence of strangers—social referents of both similar and other occupations, professions, sub-cultures, ethnicities, lifestyles—who jointly expand their experiences, imaginations, and experimentation (Cnossen et al., 2020; Grabher et al., 2018; Sennett, 2018). This entwinement of urban areas and careers was central to early career studies of the Chicago School of Sociology, such as William Foote Whyte’s (1943) Street Corner Society, depicting how the careers of Italian immigrants are enacted through membership in the local gangs, groups, and communities of the North End of 1930s Boston. More recently, this idea informs the ‘creative cities’ thesis (Clark, 2004; Florida, 2002a, 2002b; Grant, 2014; Landry, 2000). It argues that a city with ‘nice places to live’ and rich opportunities for cultural consumption attracts talented people with similar aesthetic tastes, tolerant attitudes, and creative interests (e.g., artists, creatives, media people, scientists, and entrepreneurs), who jointly contribute to a city’s innovation and prosperity (e.g., Montanari et al., 2021).

Virtual reconfiguration

The digital transformation of the above four spheres has fundamental implications for careers in cities. Cities are digitally connected across global networks, even managing their business infrastructures remotely. Over past decades, global value chains have been re-engineered through digital technologies, with many jobs (e.g., software programming, call centers, translation) being relocated from metropolitan areas to lower-cost regions (DeFillippi et al., 2006). More recently, new digital business models and online platforms are reconfiguring the traditional meanings of the city for consumption, entertainment, work, and learning. On the one hand, digital platforms enable innovative ways of using material resources and coproducing embodied experiences in the city (e.g., sharing platforms, ride-sharing, matchmaking). On the other hand, digital business models and online channels enable remote shopping and virtual consumption of goods, entertainment, arts, public services, education, and health, without travelling to the city center. Accelerated by Covid-19 (Hite and McDonald, 2020), office jobs and creative work are now increasingly also performed from home.

Though the implications of this digital transformation of work are still emerging, they are certain to reconfigure the relationship between cities and careers. For example, as the pressures on transportation and office infrastructures are easing, residential areas may experience a growing demand for supportive services. As offices are downsized, vacated spaces can be repurposed. Accordingly, new creative uses of urban spaces, often blending physical and virtual space, have been emerging during Covid-19, as people in the event and creative industries have been adapting their careers. Rather than seeing a full substitution of cities’ physical office infrastructures through virtual platforms, new configurations and purposes are likely to emerge (Glaeser, 2011). Although purposeful productive work is now increasingly being performed through digital platforms for virtual collaboration, these platforms are less suited to the emergent nature of embodied co-presence and sociability (Montanari et al., 2021). Yet, the latter aspects are vital for people’s self-managed career development. The exploration of new career horizons, ideas, identities, and relationships benefits from serendipity, playfulness, and felt timelessness that comes with embodied co-presence. Thus, the virtual reconfiguration of cities offers opportunities for studying how the meanings of careers in cities are changing. It also calls for new insights about the ways by which people’s career development is entwined with their placemaking in cities.

Nexus of societal change

As cities have historically been hotspots of change and transformation, they can illuminate how broader contexts impact on the nature of work and employment (Cohen and Duberley, 2015; Collin, 1997; Gunz et al., 2011). Many changes at the levels of technology, economy, population, culture, and environment are incremental. Yet, the proximity of diverse actors, including subcultures at the margins of the status quo, media, think tanks, policymakers, consulting firms, and political classes, means that cities are incubators of innovative ideas and trends. Cities are also microcosms where social inequalities are visible, and criminal and corrupt activities are concentrated. As a complex form of human social organization, cities are places where deep-seated transformations of cultural, economic, technological, and social life are played out (Glaeser, 2011). Careers are implicated in these transformations, as reflected in a growing search for meaningfulness in careers in response to major urban disruptions (Wrzesniewski, 2002), professional movements toward the institutionalization of sustainable and socially responsible business models (Tams, 2020; Tams and Marshall, 2011), and responses to the health, social, and economic challenges of Covid-19 (Hite and McDonald, 2020). In this issue, Curseu et al. (2021) introduce the digital transformation of smart cities as a critical issue for careers. The inclusion of these broader contexts helps to counterbalance individual-centric career frameworks, and contributes with explanatory power to our understanding of careers (Cohen and Duberley, 2015; Gunz et al., 2011).

Careers in cities

Careers in cities intersect with the above spheres. Each of these city spheres structures careers, and vice versa. A person’s positioning within and across these different spheres situates their everyday work experiences over time. In interaction, they co-create individual-level phenomena that enrich our understanding of careers in cities. We illustrate these intersections with three individual-level career phenomena.

Quality of life and well-being are central to an understanding of careers in cities (Alacovska et al., 2021). The material and technological sphere shapes environmental pollution, cost and availability of housing, commuting time, and access to recreation and leisure facilities, which directly affect quality of life and can influence career decisions (e.g., Buch et al., 2017; Karsten, 2003). Commuting to work is one of the least pleasant daily tasks people undertake (Kahneman et al., 2004) and negatively affects health as well as life and job satisfaction (Clark et al., 2019). In contrast, employers can enable working at home and thereby improve employees’ quality of life. These changes in work arrangements can have varied implications, such as constraining ways of building careers through informal encounters with co-workers, and transforming people’s experience of and placemaking in cities more broadly.

The sustainable career concept (Van der Heijden and De Vos, 2015) provides a further approach for examining the effect of all city spheres on careers, including ‘quality of life’ (Greenhaus and Kossek, 2014). The relatively new sustainable career concept places emphasis on the constellation of contextual factors at different levels which promote or inhibit sustainable careers (De Vos et al., 2020). De Vos et al. (2020) argue that this emphasis on context, together with a concern for dynamic processes (changes in both the person and their context over time) distinguish this notion from other career concepts.

Mobility is a third individual-level phenomenon for studying the intersection between careers and cities. Mobility includes migration and voluntary career transitions within and between cities and other localities. Cities, within and across countries, differ in the opportunities they provide—employment, supportive communities and networks, housing, and costs (Alacovska et al., 2021; Kozhevnikov, 2021). There are over 270 million migrants worldwide (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2019), and the challenges they face in re-establishing careers in cities are significant. Pursuing employment and development opportunities in a city places high demands on migrants’ development of career competences to compensate for local workers’ relative advantages (e.g., networks, recognized credentials) (Guo and Baruch, 2021). Migrating to cities for career reasons is also associated with heightened uncertainty, resulting from competitive and uncertain labor markets and possibly a lower quality of life. Aside from migration, cities are also associated with other forms of mobility. Careers in cities may incubate voluntary mobility as people’s diverse work and non-work networks open their horizons for potentially more meaningful career opportunities (Briscoe and Hall, 2006; Montanari et al., 2021). Cities may also be associated with mobility owing to involuntary career discontinuities, as experienced by ‘zigzag people’ (Bateson, 1994, cited in Weick, 1996)—e.g., immigrants, bankrupt entrepreneurs, and people with obsolete skills.

In sum, Figure 1 highlights that the influence of cities on careers is complex and multilayered. The alignment of opportunities, constraints, and sensemaking across spheres may create tensions. We have illustrated that quality of life and well-being, sustainable careers, and mobility are concepts for studying the intersections between careers and cities, without suggesting that these three career phenomena are exhaustive. Crucially, people’s quality of awareness and response to these alignments and misalignments constitutes their ways of maintaining and changing careers in cities over time.

How to conceptualize careers in cities

Our argument that careers in cities can be understood through their intersections with various city spheres calls attention to the ways by which researchers in this emergent field conceptualize these intersections. To help the reading and design of research, we offer a framework that differentiates two styles of thinking in the production of knowledge about careers in cities. Thereby, we aim to reinvigorate longstanding meta-theoretical debates about context in career studies (e.g., Cohen and Duberley, 2015; Cohen et al., 2004; Collin and Young, 1986; Young and Collin, 2004), and encourage their dialogue with related debates in organization studies (e.g., Chia, 1995; Griffin, 2007; Ospina and Uhl-Bien, 2012). As summarized in Table 1, the framework distinguishes two ways of conceiving the nature of the world and of human beings (ontology), and thereby the objects or phenomena under investigation. Though entity-based and constructionist ways of thinking are distinct, we suggest that careers in cities may be explored using these ‘two contrasting yet interdependent styles of thinking’ (Chia, 1995: 579; emphasis in original).

Table 1.

Entity-based and constructionist ways of thinking about careers in context.

	Entity-basedway of thinking	Constructionistway of thinking
Worldview	Modernist	Postmodernist
Reasons for concern about ‘careers in context’	Concern that career phenomena cannot be explained sufficiently by focusing exclusively on individual attributes.	Concern that careers are constituted through individuals’ participation in social fields of practice.
Object of study	Individual as discrete entity, separate from their context.	‘Career’ as a reified social fact, that socially constructs the self in relation to the institutions of work over time and space.
View of career	Career is a property of entities over time and space.	Career derives from the relational process of social life constructing the ‘working self’ over time and space.
View of context	A discrete entity, event, or process which explains variance in career-related phenomena.	A process of mutual enactment.
Analytical concern of ‘career in cities’	Causal relationships, seeking to explain how attributes of city context explain variations in career-related phenomena, and vice versa.	How the construal of careers draws on culturally-learned, collective repertoires about work, non-work life, and the city, including its social, symbolic, and material aspects.

Careers in cities from an entity way of thinking

One approach toward conceptualizing the intersection between careers and cities is grounded in an entity perspective. This perspective is consistent with Chia’s (1995) description of the ‘modernist’ style of thinking, where social phenomena (e.g., career success, mobility, competences) are associated with entities (e.g., individuals, organizations, cities), that are treated discretely and studied in isolation. In this approach, elements of the context are operationalized as variables and used to explain variance in the phenomenon of interest (Griffin, 2007). For example, Mayrhofer et al. (2007: 216) consider ‘contextual issues as comprising all those exogenous factors that influence careers of individuals and the organizations and “fields” they are in’. Their review identifies many different contexts across multiple levels (individual, work context, societal, cultural, and global), which have been used in diverse disciplines to explain how individual careers are shaped.

An entity perspective constructs the intersection between careers and cities as a causal effect of one element on the other. Discrete elements in the context of the city are seen to enable or constrain career phenomena at the individual level. The entity perspective on careers in cities thus requires us to identify the ‘discrete context,’ that is the situational variables associated with the city that have a direct impact on careers or that moderate relationships involving careers (Johns, 2006). These variables can be drawn from the city’s multiple spheres—locality and networks, material/technological infrastructure, economic activity, non-work life, virtual reconfiguration, and nexus of change—summarized in Figure 1.

Consideration of these city variables points to an important question: to what extent have our existing career theories (typically developed by researchers living and working in cities) been constrained or distorted by a failure to explicitly incorporate the city? If we fail to include city variables in our careers research, we are likely to make incorrect inferences. In careers research especially, we may ascribe greater agency to an individual’s succession of work-related experiences rather than seeing causative factors such as transport, housing, and crime rates.

Taking the city context for granted can blind us to city-related assumptions built into career concepts (e.g., Hughes, 1958). Our existing career theories may not be useful to someone outside the city context looking to assume responsibility for an inherited farm to provide for one more generation in the family legacy. Or, they may not be useful to a professional working in a small town faced with monotonous responsibilities and limited options for growth and development. Career constructs (such as employability, career success, career agency, identity, work–life balance, job-matching) take on different meanings in rural environments. Sources of career satisfaction such as community engagement, sense of place, history, and continuing a family legacy may have more salience in rural locations than pay, promotion, and skills development.

From the entity perspective, a focus on careers in cities largely assumes social reality as an objective fact, even though the approach can accommodate subjectivity arising from individual variations in perceptions of such factors. It also views various city constructs as independent. Two articles in this special issue examine the influence of macro- and meso-level city variables on the micro-level of individual career strategies and career outcomes. Guo and Baruch (2021) consider city factors affecting career outcomes of rural-to-urban migrants, and Kozhevnikov (2021) compares the differential effects of global and second-order cities on careers.

Guo and Baruch (2021) demonstrate the value of including city-level variables when studying the influence of human and social capital on career success. Basing their study in China, where rural to urban migration has been a central component of the country’s economic growth, they demonstrate that city-level institutional capital moderates the relationship between individual (human, social) capital and career success. Elements such as the extent of social inequality, healthcare disparity, judicial efficiency, accountability of city administrative authorities, and quality of education combine to form a measure of a city’s institutional capital. Higher levels of institutional capital markedly strengthen the relationship between human capital and extrinsic career success, a result the authors attribute to enhanced opportunities for talented individuals in a ‘free’ city. Intriguingly, high levels of social participation afforded by such freedom may have a negative effect on extrinsic career success, perhaps by diverting time and energy in other directions.

Kozhevnikov (2021) also considers the effect of cities on migrant careers, but his focus is on contrasting the career experiences of 82 skilled migrants in global versus second-order cities. Global cities (e.g., London, Paris, New York) are attractive for certain careers (see, for example, Alacovska et al., 2021), but less is known about the role of secondary cities. Using the intelligent careers framework, Newcastle (secondary city) and London are shown to differently enable and constrain skilled migrants’ careers through three city-level factors—labor market, community, and lifestyle. These skilled and internationally mobile workers do not have unfettered agency. Context influences the development and value of career capital, with variations across cities highlighting the importance of moving beyond individual competences to a deeper understanding of how city context influences opportunities and outcomes.

These two articles illustrate how an entity approach to incorporating the city in career studies informs an understanding of the characteristics of urban contexts that enable and constrain individual career outcomes. They also show how these urban characteristics interact with individual attributes and actions (e.g., competences, social capital, migration decisions) to predict career outcomes.

Careers in cities from a constructionist way of thinking

Careers in cities can also be conceptualized through a constructionist way of thinking. Here, careers and context are viewed as a process of mutual enactment (Griffin, 2007). A constructionist approach is consistent with Chia’s (1995) description of the ‘postmodernist’ style of thinking, which foregrounds a view of reality as inherently processual. In contrast to a view of humans as independent entities, they are viewed as inherently interdependent participants in the process of social life. People’s construal of themselves as ‘individual selves with a career’ results from their participation in relational fields of culturally and historically situated practices (Cohen et al., 2004; Young and Collin, 2004). A career is a phenomenon that people accomplish through participation in social practices—their ways of using talk, text, images, material artefacts, technologies, and body to perform self in relation to social situations (e.g., interviews, mentoring, retirement, etc.). Through their participation in social practices, people socially construe the ‘working self’ over time and space in relation to the contemporary institutions of work. In this performance, the career is reified as something that one ‘has’. As people socially construct the notion of ‘career’, they also construct its context—the career ecosystems, its actors, and the city—so that ‘figure and ground are inseparable’ (Griffin, 2007: 860).

From a constructionist perspective, the city is an omnibus context (Johns, 2006), something the observer discovers and ‘contextualizes’ inside/out (Collin and Young, 1986) through their lived experiences and further imaginations across time and social space (Çınar and Bender, 2007; Tuan, 1977). From an individual’s perspective, a career in a city is the complex whole of a concrete situation at a moment in time with a unique constellation of interwoven elements with rich properties. The individual’s selection of city features is directed toward practical ends. Contextualizing one’s career in a city involves making sense of oneself and one’s work and non-work experiences across the city’s multiple spheres over time, imagining one’s future career in meaningful ways, and building relationships. Contextualizing also involves working out the tensions and contradictions across different city spheres (Mitra and Buzzanell, 2017) and responding to changes in their dynamic environments (Tams and Marshall, 2011). Thus, individuals’ contextualizing of careers in cities over time may maintain and transform both (Barley, 1989).

Three articles in this special issue illustrate a constructionist way of thinking, where careers and cities are mutually constituting. Alascovska et al. (2020) explore the ways by which creative workers construct career transitions from metropolitan creative cities to more peripheral cities. Drawing on Nussbaum’s capability approach, the authors analyze how 31 freelancers perceive the influence of different urban areas on their capability to live life well while also pursuing a creative career. The study contributes in several ways to knowledge about careers in cities. It challenges and extends prior literature’s prevailing focus on metropolitan cities as hosts for creative careers. It illuminates the role of ‘good life’ evaluations in creative workers’ efforts towards resolving the tensions inherent in urban careers. It also suggests that creative workers’ construal of cities and geographical career transitions are inherently entwined with their ways of making sense of career success and meaningful professional identities.

Similarly, Montanari et al. (2021) propose creative workers’ construal of city and subjective career success as entwined and mutually constituting. The authors draw on the notion of city identity (Jones and Svejenova, 2017) and Lotman’s (2005) concept of the semiosphere to examine the ways by which creative workers construct their city context to make sense of their recognition by others. The findings contribute to a mutually constituting understanding of careers and city, suggesting that creative workers’ ways of filtering city identity change as their recognition-related needs evolve over the course of their career. The article also suggests that creative workers’ interpretation of the city’s identity as matching (or not matching) their need for recognition is implicated in their consideration of a career transition to other cities. The authors argue that urban policymakers can strengthen a city’s creative identity by developing creative career ecosystems, with co-working hubs and networking opportunities.

Lastly, the essay by Curseu et al. (2021) engages critically with the way careers intersect with a city’s sphere of social and technological transformation. In an increasingly digital world, ‘smart cities’ are propagated as solutions to contemporary urban challenges, such as sustainability. According to the authors, this modernist discourse fails to attend to smart cities’ human ramifications. Drawing on a sociotechnical approach and a dynamic person–environment fit perspective, they identify smart cities’ systemic challenges for the development of sustainable careers. Against the backdrop of their critical analysis, the authors call for a more engaged, human-centered approach. We come to see the social construction of careers in cities not merely as a scholarly lens, but as a policy recommendation for addressing sustainable career challenges. The authors call for the co-creation of a sustainable career ecosystem in smart cities, with a focus on the development of ICT literacy, citizen participation, and network-centric organizing of sustainable careers.

Why knowledge about careers in cities matters

Knowledge about careers in cities contributes to individuals, organizations, and urban policymaking, including economic and social development.

At the individual level, people benefit from knowledge about how to engage effectively across multiple spheres of cities, make use of opportunities for developing careers, and work out the tensions, risks, and constraints of sustainable careers in cities. Though prior literature has contributed to our understanding of the dispositions, orientations, and purposeful efforts that help individuals take ownership of their careers (e.g., Arthur et al., 2017; Briscoe and Hall, 2006; DeFillipi and Arthur, 1994) and build sustainable careers (e.g., Chudzikowski et al., 2020; De Vos and Van der Heijden, 2015), knowledge about careers in cities broadens our understanding beyond the immediate work context, such as organizations, projects, and networks. Insights from the experiences of workers in global and secondary cities (Alacovska et al., 2021; Kozhevnikov, 2021) informs career ownership, as they highlight trade-offs between career outcomes and broader considerations of well-being at the nexus of careers and cities.

At the organizational level, studies of careers in cities extend organization-centric approaches to human resource management. Such research informs an understanding of the ways by which organizations can attract and retain workers, who are both geographically and psychologically more ‘mobile’ (e.g., in terms of protean/boundaryless career orientations [Briscoe and Hall, 2006]), who are looking for flexibility about their places of work, who are open to the opportunities their city environment affords for the encounter of innovative and unconventional ideas (Florida, 2002a), but also face more complex urban challenges for quality of life and sustainable careers (De Vos and Van der Heijden, 2015). Studies such as those in this issue by Alacovska et al. (2021), Curseu et al. (2021), and Kozhevnikov (2021) can illuminate non-organizational considerations which influence people’s decisions to join or leave employers.

This research agenda can also illuminate how organizations can meet employment needs in relation to a city’s brand identity and within its wider career ecosystems (Baruch, 2015; Baruch and Rousseau, 2019). For example, it may offer a more systematic understanding of the ways by which organizations can attract, develop, and create projects with skilled workers in partnership with other dedicated organizations, ranging from vocational schools, universities, and co-training schemes to local business associations, start-up accelerator programs, innovation labs, and co-working spaces (Chan, et al., 2020; Mariotti et al., 2017; Stolarick and Florida, 2006).

The importance to career success of non-material aspects of cities, such as city identity (Montanari et al., 2021) and institutional freedom (Guo and Baruch, 2021), has important implications for city leaders. Knowledge about careers in cities enables urban policymakers to consider the ways by which individuals’ employment and employability, as well as career ecosystems, are implicated in co-creating solutions to increasingly complex urban challenges, associated with issues such as pandemics, population growth, migration, climate change adaptation, limited resources, and inequality of opportunity, while also ensuring quality of life and sustainable careers for all citizens (Alacovska et al., 2021; Curseu et al., 2021; Guo and Baruch, 2021).

Conclusions

Cities are a microcosm through which to illuminate the contextual turn in career studies, and also draw implications about careers in cities for individuals, organizations, and urban policymakers. As a multilayered and dynamic form of human social organization, cities stabilize social life and are also a source of change and societal transformation. As we finalize this review, the four authors are working in four different cities, which share the impact of Covid-19 while dealing with it in different ways and with differing levels of success. The pandemic has disrupted urban life in profound ways, and thereby raised awareness for aspects of city life which have previously been taken for granted. It has thrown into stark relief the disparity between what people are paid and how essential, for example, supermarket workers, hospital orderlies, and cleaners are to everyday life. It has put hospitality, events, and the cultural life of cities into prolonged lockdown, creating economic hardship for workers in these sectors. For those who continued to work, the pandemic has disrupted institutions of city life which are essential to our abilities to work, such as the safe use of public transport and office space, schools’ capacity for children to be educated safely, reliance on health systems, and the ability to relax and foster friendships after work. Along with these disruptions, new patterns of working and making a career have been emerging—from unemployed people taking up hospital jobs to fashion designers turning into mask makers, and companies announcing plans to introduce permanent work-from-home policies. We have been learning that careers in cities are less about planning and more about responding in creative ways to disruptions. In parallel, urban policymakers are exploring how future cities can adapt to other challenges arising from issues such as climate change, rising sea levels, migration, and inequalities in socio-spatial arrangements.

There has never been a more appropriate time for careers researchers to incorporate the city as context. The framework we have proposed in this review opens up possibilities for diverse approaches to furthering our understanding of the intertwined relationship between cities (real and imagined) and careers. In the spirit of cities inviting us to foster an attitude of openness to those who are different, it is our hope that this special issue will encourage the further development of, and exchange between, diverse ways of thinking about careers in cities. Insights into people’s lived experiences of careers in cities open up powerful new ways to think about careers in context, and have the potential to shape future research and practice.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Nick Turner and the editorial team for constructive feedback on the initial proposal, and all referees involved in the peer review process. We would also like to thank Claire Castle, Hannah Steer, and the team at Human Relations for their expertise and support with this special issue.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Svenja Tams

Jeffrey C Kennedy

Svenja Tams is Professor of Management, Organizations & Leadership at SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Germany. Her research examines professional development, careers, issue-based change work, and change agent identity work within contradictory contexts, often at the intersection of business and broader societal contexts. She has published in international journals including Career Development International, Human Relations, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Journal of Vocational Behavior. [Email: svenja.tams@srh.de]

Jeffrey C Kennedy is a Senior Lecturer in Massey Executive Development on Massey University’s Auckland, New Zealand, campus. His research interests include careers, leadership, and cross-cultural management. His research has been published in a variety of journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of International Business Studies, Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Global Mobility, and Frontiers in Psychology. He has co-edited a recent book, Entrepreneurship–Professionalism–Leadership: A Multidimensional Framework for Human Capital and Career Development in the 21st Century. [Email: j.c.kennedy@massey.ac.nz]

Michael B Arthur is Visiting Professor at Cranfield School of Management, UK and Emeritus Professor of Management at Suffolk University, Boston, MA. He has edited and authored scholarly books including the Handbook of Career Theory (1989), The Boundaryless Career (1996), The New Careers (1999), Career Creativity (2002), Knowledge at Work (2006), and most recently Career Dynamics in a Global World: Indian and Western Perspectives (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020, with Premarajan Raman Kadiyil and Anneleen Forrier). Another recent book, aimed directly at career owners, is An Intelligent Career: Taking Ownership of Your Work and Your Life (Oxford University Press, 2017, 2018). [Email: mbarthur01@gmail.com]

Kim-Yin Chan is Associate Professor of Leadership, Management & Organization at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research seeks to understand entrepreneurial, professional, and leadership dimensions of work in the 21st century. He has published widely in international scholarly journals including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Career Assessment, Multivariate Behavioral Research, Educational and Psychological Measurement, and Frontiers in Psychology. He has authored a book entitled Leadership in the 21st Century: Science and Practice, and co-edited a recent book, Entrepreneurship–Professionalism–Leadership: A Multidimensional Framework for Human Capital and Career Development in the 21st Century. [Email: akychan@ntu.edu.sg]

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