Using the Psychological Contract to Explore the Experiences of Migrant Domiciliary Care Workers within London

This qualitative research makes use of the psychological contract construct and literature to explore the lived work perceptions and experiences of migrants undertaking domiciliary care work within London, in their multi- agency type of employment. The researcher examines these using the stories of forty four migrants employed in various types of contingent work arrangements. The participants are drawn from diverse employer types. Data interpretation and analysis was conducted using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Hermeneutic Phenomenology. Initially, rich and thick descriptions are availed through an inductive analysis of the verbatim audio recorded interviews in presenting the migrant domiciliary carers‘ work experiences. In the next phase of analysis, the data is interrogated using the psychological contract thereby applying a more deductive approach.
This research sample is drawn from migrants of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, both male and female and uses the psychological contract to explore their work experiences, a novel approach from earlier research conducted on migrants performing domiciliary care work. The inveterate nature of idiosyncrasy, subjectivity, dynamism and the importance of the psychological contract in employment relations have been confirmed. Though migrant workers are usually seen as a homogeneous population, evidence from this research shows that these workers‘ are heterogeneous, each with a variety of views about their work experiences. Each of the participant interviewees held at least one type of psychological contract with the party or parties they deem to be in an employment relationship with and the experiences at work shape this contract