Tied Migration and Anticipatory Discrimination

• In Event: 2451 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 18. Organizational Recruiting, Hiring and Promotion

Abstract

People who move to support the employment prospects of their spouse are tied migrants. This geographical disruption directly affects the career trajectories of tied migrants. Military spouses are an ideal case for studying how tied migration affects employment because they experience tied migration repeatedly: active duty military personnel move about once every two years, twice as often as civilian families. Military spouses experience worse employment outcomes than their civilian peers, but little empirical research explicitly tries to adjudicate the mechanisms generating such outcomes. We develop and test a theory of anticipatory discrimination by explicitly evaluating how past geographic mobility and future expectations of geographic stability influence evaluations of women job seekers. We use three complementary experimental methods: a vignette experiment, a field audit study, and a replication of the audit study with members of the general public, to assess how past and future expectations of mobility lead to differential evaluations of women job seekers. This study informs how employers penalize a group of workers for being mobile, non-linear, or exhibiting other dimensions of “nonstandard” work, yet that is precisely the direction the economy is ostensibly headed. Most importantly, in developing the theory of anticipatory discrimination, this study has the potential to inform a broader class of differential treatment in hiring and other processes, namely discrimination on the basis of potential future behavior or statuses.

Authors

• Meredith A. Kleykamp, University of Maryland

• Brittany N. Dernberger, University of Maryland, College Park

• Danielle Wilson, American University