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Employment rates fell dramatically between March and April 2020 as the initial shock of the COVID-19 pandemic reverberated through the US labor market. This paper uses data from the CPS Basic Monthly Files to document that the employment decline was particularly severe for immigrants. Historically, immigrant men are more likely to work than native men. The pandemic-related labor market shock eliminated the immigrant employment advantage. After this initial precipitous drop, however, the employment recovery through June 2021 was much stronger for immigrants, and particularly for undocumented immigrants. The steep drop in immigrant employment at the start of the pandemic occurred partly because immigrants were less likely to work in jobs that could be performed remotely and suffered disproportionate employment losses as only workers with remotable skills were able to continue working from home. The stronger employment recovery of undocumented immigrants, relative to that experienced by natives or legal immigrants, is mostly explained by the fact that undocumented workers were not eligible for the generous unemployment insurance (UI) benefits offered to workers during the pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse if introduction of new technologies and work practices are negatively related to the employment opportunities of immigrants.

A representative plant-level panel survey merged with register data is used. Random effect regression Tobit models are estimated. The dependent variable is wage costs share of immigrants at the plant. The important explanatory variables are measures of new technologies and work practices.

The results show that workplaces where employees use personal computers intensively and have broad autonomy hire fewer non-western immigrants who have not been raised in Norway. The negative relationship is especially strong for low-skilled non-western immigrants.

The estimation framework for studying this topic is new. The paper also presents original evidence on the relationship between characteristics of the “new” economy and demand for immigrant workers.

This study is an inductive exploration of factors that are relevant to the inclusion and integration of immigrant workers in a Swedish workplace. The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of immigrant employees with other organisational actors at two senior nursing units in Sweden.

Results are drawn from the analyses of interviews with six female and three male immigrant nursing assistants living permanently in Sweden.

Trustful relationships with other organisational actors, during both formal and informal interactions, are considered essential facilitating inclusion of these immigrant workers. Immigrant workers experienced inclusion when they achieved language competence (or felt supported in their attempts to do so) and bridged cultural differences. The results also highlight conditions for interactions and leadership as factors influencing inclusion. In addition, inclusion implied acculturation or awareness of the values of native-born citizens.

The study suggests that immigrants’ relational dynamics with their colleagues are essential to inclusion, despite types of studies that focus mainly on the competences of leaders to manage diversity.

The results have implications for organisations’ development of a more democratic workplace with more inclusiveness and with satisfied employees.

The study gives voice to immigrant workers, which is rare in Swedish and international organisations that deal with the issue of immigrant integration in the workplace.

We use simulations from a detailed dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to study three broad policies toward illegal workers in U.S. employment: supply restriction (tighter border security), demand restriction (prosecution of employers), and legalization through a guest-worker program with a visa tax. From the point of view of the welfare of legal residents, the results strongly favor the third option. In our welfare analysis, we use a six-part decomposition. This identifies effects on the occupational mix of legal employment as a major factor. Throughout the chapter, model results are explained through arguments and diagrams that will be familiar to economists, particularly those working in trade. No familiarity with the underlying CGE model is assumed. Technical details on our labor market assumptions are given in the Appendix.

This paper aims to analyse the short- and long-term effects of entering the Spanish labour market under tough economic conditions on young immigrant–native earnings and employment outcomes.

The authors use cohorts, where the entry cohort into the labour market is the unit of observation. As a database, the authors use the continuous sample of working histories covering the period 2007–2021. Then, the authors estimate the model using weighted least squares.

The results show that the great recession and COVID-19 led to a blockage at the entrance of the labour market, reducing the number of workers. Additionally, the authors observe an adverse impact in terms of employment and earnings on those entering the labour market. Besides, this effect varies in intensity and persistence for natives and immigrants, as well as by country of birth, age of entry, gender and educational level.

A contribution to the literature is the analysis of the earnings and employment trajectories of young people entering the Spanish labour market for the first time during an adverse shock, such as the 2008 economic crisis or the COVID-19 crisis, and the possible differences that exist between native and immigrant workers. So, the authors analyse the labour market trajectories of workers covering the most recent years. Likewise, the authors carry out an extensive heterogeneity analysis in which they distinguish workers by educational level, gender, age of entry into the labour market and immigrants by their country of birth. This represents an additional contribution. The use of a cohort approach also contributes to the existing literature.

Shows how the US economy has witnessed both a massive influx of immigrant workers and a sharp decline in organized labour. Examines the struggles of Latino workers in Los Angeles, USA and shows just how immigrant workers and labour unions have a complicated relationship there. Explains how the problems were eventually eased.

This chapter examines the lives of Central American immigrant workers, with a focus on the paramount position of legal status in immigrants’ lives.

The legal context into which Central American immigrant workers arrive creates the various legal statuses they hold, which in turn dictate the kind of jobs they can obtain, where they live and, in general, shape their prospects in the United States. Although many Central Americans have held various forms of temporary protection from deportation, such relief is temporary and therefore subject to multiple extensions, applications, forms, and renewals, which serve to accentuate these immigrants’ legal uncertainty. Given their legal predicament and the consequent truncated paths to mobility, many Central American immigrant workers live in poverty; indeed, they are more likely to live in poverty than other foreign born. At the same time, they have high labor force participation rates. Their high rates of poverty coupled with high labor force participation rates indicate that their jobs do not pay much. In spite of these circumstances, they remit a significant portion of their earnings to their non-migrating family members in the origin countries.

The largely unchanged occupational and sectorial concentrations of Central Americans in the U.S. economy over the last two decades underscores the critical implications of legal status for immigrant incorporation and socioeconomic mobility.

This chapter exposes the vulnerabilities imposed by a precarious legal status and highlights the importance of more secure legal statuses for immigrant workers’ potential integration and paths to mobility.

In this paper, the aim is to present an historical analysis to account for the association between prostitution, disease, and victimization. It also seeks to examine how stigmatization and rejection are currently focused on the immigrant sex worker.

The analysis is based on historical data about regulations in Portugal, in a recent ethnography carried out with street prostitutes and in a current study on immigrant sex workers and health care.

Sex workers have been recognized as a group “at risk” both because they are associated with sexually transmitted diseases and because they are acknowledged as victims of traffic and sexual exploitation. This label “group at risk” justifies some state policies often expressed in sanitary and social control measures, as regulations. Because migrant sex workers are simultaneously immigrants and sex workers they are perceived as a threat to social order and a sign of moral disorder and, so, they experience processes of rejection and stigmatization more significantly than local sex workers.

The knowledge of the negative consequences experienced by migrant sex workers implies an effort to produce changes in the policies and practices towards them. All those involved in research or intervention with migrant sex workers have the responsibility to be aware of the discrimination, violence, and control they are subjected to and must be committed enough to challenge them. This paper can be a contribution to that.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of an increase in the relative supply of immigrants on natives’ task reallocation, with a focus on Germany. Specifically, it investigates whether natives, as a response to increased immigration, re-specialise in communication-intensive occupations, where they arguably have a comparative advantage due to language proficiency.

The analysis uses regional data from the German Labour Force Survey between 2002 and 2014. To derive data on job tasks requirements, it employs the US Department of Labor’s O*NET database, the results of which are tested through a sensitivity analysis using the European Working Condition Survey and the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies data sets.

The paper finds that indeed German workers respond to increasing immigration by shifting their task supply and providing more communication relative to manual tasks. Importantly, the decrease in the supply of communication tasks is stronger and more robust than the increase in the supply of manual tasks, pointing to a potential displacement effect taking place between natives and immigrants, alongside task reallocation. This would suggest that countries with relatively more rigid labour markets are less responsive to immigration shocks. Moreover, it suggests that labour market rigidity can minimise the gains from immigration and exacerbate employment effects.

The paper not only investigates task reallocation as a result of immigration in a different institutional context and labour market functioning, but the results feed into broader policy and scholarly discussions on the effects of immigration, including questions about how the institutional context affects labour market adjustment to immigration, worker occupational mobility in a more rigid labour markets and the fine balance needed between flexibility and rigidity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of race, gender, and region of birth by assessing the earnings of blacks and whites from Africa, blacks from the Americas, whites from Europe and Asians from Asia.

Using data from the 2000 Census of Population and Housing, different income levels were used to see if there were any variations in earnings. Logistic regression analyses were used to estimate the odds of earnings at the various percentiles of the income of white African men, controlling for the human capital resources and other demographic variables.

The paper finds an unambiguous race effect among male workers. White males from both Africa and Europe have significant advantage over non‐white male workers from Africa, the Americas, and Asia. However, the earnings attainment is more favorable to white African males regardless of income levels. Further, a gender effect is also found in that relative to the earnings of white African‐born males, all the female workers in our study had lower odds at all the earning percentiles regardless of race and region of origin.

This paper helps clarify the issue of gender and stratification as it relates to immigrants in the USA.