The Job you trained for isn't always waiting for you in Australia.
Migrants arriving in Australia often assume their qualifications will transfer straight into the workforce.
But for Rohit Roy Kumar, president of the Australian Integrated Fijian Association of Victoria (AIFAV), that assumption is one of the biggest obstacles facing the Fijian diaspora today.
"The biggest challenge is people have that perception that when you migrate to Australia, you can straight away get into that job."Rohit Roy Kumar
Skills earned overseas often don't map directly onto the Australian education framework, leaving qualified professionals starting over from the bottom.
Kumar knows the gap firsthand. After migrating from Fiji in 2001, where he worked for the Ministry of Education as a Senior Clerical Officer, he couldn't find equivalent work in Australia and instead took a job as a console operator at a service station.
For five years, he studied at university by day and worked nights, until he requalified under the Australian system and moved into his field.
"This is my story and this is the story of all the migrants here."Rohit Roy Kumar
That mismatch between expectation and reality sits alongside a second, quieter cost of migration, one Kumar has watched play out in his own community: the erosion of cultural identity.
"We have to keep our identities alive as Fijian, and then we have to embrace the Australian way of life and adapt to the Australian culture as well. And especially we come for a better future. And what we have noticed along that journey, we are actually losing our identity as Fijian."Rohit Roy Kumar
It's this dual challenge — rebuilding a career from scratch while holding onto a culture under pressure to assimilate — that inspired Kumar to help set up AIFAV in 2016.
AIFAV runs cultural events, senior support programs and language classes aimed at keeping Fijian and Indo-Fijian identity alive for the next generation.
