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Title: "We Wanted Employers, But We Got People Instead": Racialization of Immigrant Ethnicity and Occupational Attainment in the
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2018
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Abstract: This paper explores how immigrants’ ethnic identification influences their occupational status attainment in the United States West Coast labor market. Data from the American Community Survey from 2008 to 2013 are divided into ethnic categories to compare how immigrant workers fare vis-à-vis US-born workers. It uses educational attainment, immigration status, and English proficiency to predict the variance in occupational status between and within ethnic groups. The analysis is based on a nested three-block ordinary least squares regression (OLS), and an interacted model between the three main predictors and the ethnic group identifiers. The findings confirm the significant effect of education, immigration status, and English proficiency on occupational status scores. As expected, increases in education, holding a legal immigration status, and being fluent in English have positive effects on occupational status attainment, other things being equal. This positive relationship, however, is not equally manifested across ethnic groups. The study reveals that a significant percentage of these predictors’ explanatory power is lost among some ethnic groups, strongly suggesting a patterned and significant effect of labor market discrimination. Contrast analysis of the predictive margins of the four-way interacted model provides further evidence in support of negative exclusionary discrimination against some immigrant groups, especially Mexicans and Central Americans. This negative effect is especially evident among highly educated Mexicans and Central Americans, who, regardless of their legal status, and English fluency, tend to be more likely to work in lower status occupations than their immigrant counterparts. This finding questions previously established notions according to which maximizing human capital, 2 possessing legal immigrant status, and being fluent in English pave the way to the successful integration of immigrants into the U.S. labor market. This study, thus, provides much needed empirical evidence supporting some of the arguments put forward by the Racialization of Ethnicity theory
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Authors: Becerra, Carlos
Institution: University of California-Davis
Department: Community Development
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration
Countries: United States