Career guidance in a Fiji-context

Abstract: Due to globalization and migration people and their cultures spread worldwide andcareer-guiding practitioners have to be more culturally considerate when they meetpeople. Our studies made in Fiji shows that there is a gap between thoughts regardingestimated income, education and effort in a workplace and actual labour-marketconditions. Educated and qualified Fijians look for work abroad when they can’t findemployment at home. One way to understand and describe what happens when peoplemake career decisions is to use career or decision-making theories, and a way to workwith career decisions and ideas about work is to have guidance-interviews or groupsessions. The aim of this paper is to present an example of how a recognized interviewmodel might be adapted for career guidance in a Fiji-context and what considerations that have to be made, through the explanations offered by a career theory, a decisionmaking theory and a guidance theory. Based on the life-story of a group of Fijians the result showed that the main considerations were regarding social structures and conceptions of time.