The rapid internationalization of higher education exposes students to career barriers that vary by both societal structure and culture. Built on the Psychology of Working Theory (PWT), this cross-national study examined how economic constraints and marginalization shape the perception of future decent work through two psychological resources—work volition (agency) and career adaptability (resilience)—and how these pathways are moderated by cultural identity (American vs. Chinese nationality), societal system (United States vs. China), and prior work experience.


Method. 845 participants were retained for data analysis. We used parallel English and Chinese surveys to reduce language bias. Based on PWT, we apply a full-factorial path model-- an advance over traditional pairwise group comparisons -- to test latent means, variances, paths, and covariances across three moderators (cultural identity, societal system, and prior work experience).


Results. Part of paths were supported among all participants: economic constraints and marginalization all significant predicts work volition and work volition are significantly related with career adaptability. Cultural identity significantly moderated key pathways: marginalization more strongly suppressed volition among Chinese students (p = .022), while adaptability (p < .001) and volition (p = .038) more powerfully predicted decent work; American students reported higher work volition (p < .001) but lower career adaptability (p < .001) and lower perceptions of future decent work (p < .001). Regarding the societal system, living in US society is associated with higher positive effect of adaptability on decent work than in China (p < .001). The third moderator, wok experience, was found to enhance volition (p = .040) and adaptability (p = .001) across the three groups.


These paradoxical patterns from this study extend PWT by positioning cultural identity as a pivotal moderator and by illustrating a dialectical process in which structural disadvantage can catalyze vocational resilience. Implication and future research direction will be discussed.