Professional Legitimacy Dilemma: Workplace Adaptation of High-Skilled Turkish Immigrants in Vienna

This study explores how recently arrived high-skilled Turkish professionals adapt when work-intensity orientations developed through previous experience encounter wellbeing-oriented workplaces in Vienna. Drawing on interviews and a six-week WhatsApp phase with 17 participants, it analyzes critical incidents through case-centered thematic-narrative analysis. Findings reveal a professional legitimacy dilemma: Participants seek to re-establish professional worth through intensive effort while conforming to expectations of bounded availability, sustainable pacing, role clarity, coordination, and authorized contribution. Although they value protected boundaries, migration-related status disruption generates a proving imperative expressed through overperformance and self-intensification. The study conceptualizes wellbeing as a moral-organizational order governing locally legitimate professional conduct.