Abstract
The hospitality industry in Japan has high expectations for foreign workers in an era
of multicultural conviviality, where the working population is decreasing, and the flow
of people is more intense. Foreign workers need to adapt to a different culture in Japan
while simultaneously developing their careers. This study examines the lives of foreign
workers who have “adapted to a different culture” in Japan and “developed their
careers in the hospitality industry” to capture the transformation of their consciousness
and clarify their self-concept. Therefore, semi-structured interviews were conducted
with four foreign workers who have been in the hospitality industry for a long time.
The data were then analyzed using the “Trajectory Equifinality Approach (TEA),”
which captures various life paths on a time axis and examines models of description and
symbols of occurrence. The results revealed that the transformation of consciousness
among the four foreign workers occurred at turning points in their lives, reexamining
the place where they lived and their relationships with the people around them under
“cross-cultural adaptation” and “career development,” and that they reconstructed
their self-concept each time.
