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Abstract
Immigration is a complex phenomenon that continues to increase and impact countries and individuals on a global scale. Transnationalism provides a framework for understanding immigration as a fluidity of identity between countries, including knowledge one acquires in various contexts. There is not a break between the identity and knowledge an individual gains in one country when immigrating to a new country. There can be, however, barriers to knowledge mobility between contexts, particularly to the knowledge of immigrant professionals. These individuals earned post-secondary education and training in their home countries but are often unable to practice in their fields once they immigrate to another country. This dissertation explores this topic through three, journal-ready articles within a theoretical framework of recognition theory. In Chapter One, I offer a detailed introduction of the topic, describing the problem, establishing the framework, and explaining the purpose of the dissertation. Chapter Two is an integrative literature review on the topic. In this review, I explored the topic from a global level, synthesizing key themes from the literature to create a conceptual framework. Chapter Three is a narrative inquiry study exploring the learning journey and experiences of nonrecognition for immigrant professionals in the United States using critical events and creative nonfiction methodology to present the findings through a composite story. The story demonstrated nonrecognition as humiliating and stimulating, overcoming nonrecognition through learning, and the learning journey as lifelong. Chapter Four is a policy analysis exploring trends of recognition in occupational licensing policies in the U.S. in a mixed methods study. I used descriptive statistics for quantitative analysis and critical discourse analysis for qualitative analysis and found a trend towards recognition of immigrant professional knowledge dominated by discourses of neoliberalism and the workplace. In Chapter Five, I conclude the dissertation by summarizing the previous chapters, making connections across the three articles, and offering implications for future research on this topic.