Unlocking Integration: Employment, Belonging, and Political Motivation

• In Event: Immigrant Integration

Abstract

How do immigrants integrate? Despite the voluminous research on immigrant integration, discussion of how various integration strategies interact is left relatively unnoticed. As governments are only increasing their commitment to integration over time (cf. Goodman 2014), there is a clear and identifiable need for meso-theorizing to establish whether these multiple forms of integration interact to augment ‘universal’ integration. This paper aims to close this meso-level gap by asking how migrant integration in one domain impacts integration in others. Using panel data of migrants to the United States (N=141), I find evidence economic integration via employment enables subsequent civic and political integration. I use this descriptive evidence to introduce an experiment isolating employment’s causal role in establishing civic and political outcomes among migrants to the United States. In this experiment, I report on results in which foreign- and native-born participants (N=560) evaluate civic group identification and likelihood of political action as a result of random assignment to either an ‘employed’ or ‘unemployed’ condition. Preliminary results reveal employment amplifies security, group identification, belonging, and political motivation. These findings illuminate the importance of interdependent integration experiences—specifically, economic conditions—to holistic migrant integration.

Author

• Hannah Marie Alarian, University of Virginia