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This chapter compares and contrasts organizing and advocacy among US domestic workers and day laborers. These two occupations share many features: both are ill-suited to conventional unionism; immigrants, many of them unauthorized, have long dominated the workforce in both; both are entry-level jobs at the bottom of the labor market (although both are also internally stratified); and both have been the focus of advocacy and organizing at both the local and national level in recent decades. Yet, there are also significant contrasts between the two. First and foremost, women are the vast majority of domestic workers while men predominate among day laborers. Another striking difference is that while domestic labor is hidden from public view inside private households, day laborers are regularly on display on street corners and other public spaces. This chapter explores the effects of such similarities and differences on the collective action repertoires of day laborers and domestic workers. In both cases, many workers have individualistic, entrepreneurial ambitions, a formidable organizing challenge; yet, orientation does not necessarily impede and sometimes even facilitates collective action. Day laborers’ demands are largely economic, and these (predominantly male) workers often hope to return to their countries of origin; domestic workers (overwhelmingly female) are more interested in improved opportunities within the US. Although women are overrepresented in the leadership of both domestic workers’ and day laborers’ organizations, male day laborers and female domestic workers have distinct experiences and aspirations, and put forward different types of demands, generating gendered collective action repertoires.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the literature pertaining to occupational health disparities experienced by Latino immigrant workers in the USA and to advance a general framework based on systems science to inform epidemiological and intervention research.

Using papers and other sources from 2000 to the present, the authors examined the employment conditions and health outcomes of Latino immigrant workers and critically analyzed the pervasive evidence of health disparities, including causal mechanisms and associated intervention programs.

The occupations, including the work environment and resultant living conditions, frequently performed by Latino immigrants in the USA represent a distinct trigger of increased injury risk and poor health outcomes. Extant intervention programs have had modest results at best and are in need of more comprehensive approaches to address the complex nature of health disparities.

An integrated, systems-based framework concerning occupational health disparities among Latino immigrant workers allows for a holistic approach encompassing innovative methods and can inform high-leverage interventions including public policy.

Reductionist approaches to health disparities have had significant limitations and miss the complete picture of the many influences. The framework the authors have provided elucidates a valuable method for reducing occupational health disparities among Latino immigrant workers as well as other populations.

The paper's purpose is to examine the propensity of recent immigrants to join Irish trade unions compared to Irish workers.

The analysis is based on the 2005 Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS), a quarterly survey carried out by the Central Statistics Office.

Results show that immigrant workers are less likely to join Irish trade unions than comparable native workers. Length of residency is an important factor in the likelihood of immigrants being unionised but employment in the public or private sector assumes even greater importance than nationality in determining union membership.

While the QNHS is generally a robust representative sample survey of the population, errors may occur in the proportion of non‐Irish nationals surveyed due to difficulties of ensuring their inclusion in the sample population. Language may also be an obstacle, particularly for recently arrived immigrants.

From a trade union perspective the results highlight the need for trade unions to regularly conduct organising campaigns targeted at immigrants. Government policy aimed at integrating immigrants into the Irish labour force and ensuring adequate labour standards would be well served by ensuring greater union availability to immigrant workers.

The paper provides a profile and analysis of the extent to which immigrants are joining trade unions compared to Irish workers.

The paper's aim is to introduce the interactive acculturation model (IAM) of Bourhis et al. to predict how disconcordance in acculturation orientations between host community and immigrant workers relates to the quality of intergroup work‐relations.

The sample consisted of 141 host community (Dutch) and 41 non‐western immigrant workers of a postal service company who filled out a questionnaire. Methods of analyses include analysis of variance and multiple regression.

In line with the IAM, results showed that a higher disconcordance in preferred acculturation orientations between host community and immigrant workers related to a poorer quality of intergroup work‐relations. However, intergroup contact moderated this relationship differently for host community and immigrant workers.

Data are cross‐sectional and collected in one organization. Future studies should replicate the findings to other organizational contexts, cultural groups, and collect longitudinal data to determine causal effects.

Organizations should monitor disconcordance in acculturation orientations amongst host community and immigrant workers. A multicultural culture in organizations may reduce disconcordance in acculturation orientations between host community and immigrant workers.

The paper helps to explain the mixed findings in cultural diversity research so far, by demonstrating that disconcordance in acculturation orientations relates negatively to intergroup work‐relations in a multicultural workplace.

In this chapter, we have proposed that an important approach to understanding occupational stress and well-being among racial and ethnic minority workers is to integrate the occupational health disparities paradigm into work stress research. As such, the current chapter provides a state-of-the-art review of the existing literature on occupational health disparities for Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Americans. Each of the three sections has highlighted the unique occupational health problems encountered by the specific racial and ethnic group as well as the research and policy gaps. We end with a series of recommendations for future research.

Italian trade unions have long since promoted the defense and inclusion of immigrant workers through the promotion, within their organizations, of specific services for immigrants providing information, guidance, and bureaucratic assistance, thus enhancing the growth of immigrant members within the unions. However, only recently unions have started to promote the direct participation of immigrants in their organization. This chapter focuses on the chances of mobility and career of immigrant workers offered by unions, starting from the role of union delegate. The analysis is based on empirical research, conducted in Lombardy between 2011 and 2013, on Cgil and Cisl, the two major Italian unions. The attention to the active participation of foreign workers within the organization is still low and not widespread, but mostly limited to categories with higher presence of immigrant workers and where the board is ready to grab the opportunities offered by the appointment of immigrant unionists and to guarantee them equal chances of union career. This situation, in our opinion, promotes immigrants’ acquisition of union roles and credibility, thus paving the way of internal mobility and career opportunities in the union.

Tribeca is a predominantly wealthy, white neighborhood in New York City and is a microcosm of the service-and-information-based economy that characterizes many communities in global cities today. Tribeca residents are mostly affluent and work in high-end, service-oriented professions, consuming low-end personal services produced locally. Many of the people who provide these personal services in Tribeca are foreign-born. This chapter explores the nature of intergroup contact between native residents and immigrant service workers to understand how they navigate social boundaries of race/ethnicity, nation-of-origin, occupation, and social class.

This chapter is based on six years of ethnographic data collection and participant observation, in addition to interviews with 66 informants, including both immigrant service workers and Tribeca residents.

This research highlights the importance of local contextual factors in shaping how people perceive one another and interact. Although in Tribeca this intergroup contact fails to alter boundaries of race, class, and nation-of-origin, residents and immigrants still have meaningful interpersonal contact, which is the result of bridging, or overlooking, existing social boundaries.

The results of this research challenge the assumption that relations between natives and immigrants in stratified settings are characterized by resentment or hostility. Instead, contextual factors in Tribeca shape intergroup perceptions and contact in a way that allows for positive interpersonal, albeit largely superficial, relationships to take root.

This research examines how labor union involvement shapes the civic participation of low-wage Latino immigrant workers.

Drawing on survey and semi-structured interview data gathered from a Los Angeles janitors’ labor union, I examine whether or not and how Latino immigrants apply their union experience to involvement in their children’s schools.

Results indicate that the union’s targeted member mobilization efforts produce unequal participation in union activities among immigrant workers, fostering civic and leadership skills among some and not others. At the same time, immigrant workers who do become involved in their union are then able to draw on their labor organizing and advocacy experience to address issues and concerns at their children’s schools. For some, worksite activism functions as a catalyst for newfound civic engagement; for other immigrant workers with prior civic experience in their country origin or in the United States, union involvement enhances their leadership capacity.

This empirical investigation shows how the experience of mobilizing for protests and participating in worksite campaigns allows Latino immigrant union members to overcome what are typically considered barriers to civic participation – that is, limited formal education, low occupational status, and limited English language skills. This study therefore suggests that labor union participation can have long-term effects on immigrants well beyond the benefits of a union contract.

The purpose of this paper is to assess how wages of US native workers with various educational backgrounds are affected by immigration.

This paper estimates the responses of these workers’ wages to the concentration of immigrants with various educational backgrounds in their local labour markets, using 1980‐2000 US Census data and instrumental variables approach.

Wages of native high school dropouts fall slightly in the presence of immigrant high school dropouts and high school graduates; wages of native high school graduates fall slightly in the presence of immigrant high school graduates, but rise in the presence of immigrants with higher levels of education; wages of native workers with some college education fall slightly with larger concentrations of immigrant high school graduates but rise slightly with larger concentrations of immigrant college graduates; and there is no evidence that wages of native college graduates are affected by immigration.

No previous studies have considered these possibilities when assessing the impact of immigration on native workers’ wages.

The purpose of this paper is to seek test for the precondition for labour-market competition between immigrants and natives, which implies that both are willing to accept jobs that do not differ in quality.

To test this hypothesis, using Spanish data, the paper analyses whether immigrants and natives exhibit different tastes for working conditions. The paper proceeds as follows. First, the paper estimates job satisfaction equations, where working conditions enter as covariates. Second, the paper tests whether the package of (dis)amenities inherent to their jobs differ. Additionally, the paper also tests for assimilation of immigrant workers in terms of job quality.

The paper finds that immigrant and native workers tend to exhibit the same taste for most on-the-job amenities. However, immigrants are more tolerant with jobs involving poorer environmental working conditions, more physically demanding tasks and higher exposure to physical damage. The paper also finds that immigrant workers tend to be employed in lower quality jobs. However, some of the bad working conditions tend to improve over time, suggesting some assimilation in terms of job quality.

The type of analysis the authors carry out here allows them to contribute to the literature by moving a step away from the conventional approach used in previous studies. While previous literature mostly analyses the effect of immigration in natives’ labour market outcomes and assimilation of immigrants in terms of wages and employment, this study is one of the few that focus on working conditions and the quality of jobs.