Workplace Inequality: The Impact of Diversity policies and relational power allocation on immigrants’ wages

• In Event: 3513 - Inequality and Mobility

Abstract

We follow relational inequality theory and emphasize the role of the workplace in the emergence of wage inequalities for first- and second-generation immigrants. We investigate the influence of diversity policies and relational power allocations on immigrants’ wages and how these processes are shaped by the institutional settings of the public and private sectors. Using linked employer-employee data combining administrative and survey information for 6,138 employees in 120 large workplaces, we estimate multilevel workplace fixed effects regressions. Wage disparities are considerably smaller in public than in private sector workplaces, and within-workplace wage gaps vary less across public than private sector workplaces. The implementation of inclusive diversity policies, such as mixed teams, decreases first- and even second-generation immigrants’ wage disadvantages in public sector workplaces, while they show no effect in private sector workplaces. Group-specific policies, such as language courses, show no effects in the public sector, while they increase first-generation immigrants’ wage disadvantages in the private sector. In public sector workplaces, natives have more relational power as measured by the degree of job autonomy they have as a group; first- and even second-generation immigrants’ wages are lower. Thus, even in the highly formalized and unionized public sector, which is quite successful in reducing wage inequality, some mechanisms generate immigrant wage disadvantages and subtly restore native wage premiums through the distribution of limited workplace resources. Private sector workplaces, in turn, display not only more equal access to autonomy for immigrant and native employees but also no relational inequality processes around autonomy.

Authors

• Eileen Peters, University Bielefeld

• Silvia Maja Melzer, University of Bielefeld