IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/iuiwop/0603.html

Do Oppositional Identities Reduce Employment for Ethnic Minorities?

Author

Listed:
  • Battu, Harminder

    (University of Aberdeen)

  • Mwale, McDonald

    (University of Aberdeen)

  • Zenou, Yves

    (The Research Institute of Industrial Economics)

Abstract

We develop a model in which non-white individuals are defined with respect to their social environment (family, friends, neighbors) and their attachments to their culture of origin (religion, language), and in which jobs are mainly found through social networks. We find that, depending on how strong they are linked to their culture of origin, non-whites choose to adopt "oppositional" identities since some individuals may identify with the dominant culture (status seekers) and others may reject that culture (conformists), even if it implies adverse labor market outcomes. We then test this model using a unique data set that contains extensive information on various issues surrounding ethnic identity and preferences in Britain. We find that the social environment of individuals has a strong influence on their identity choice. We also find that those non-whites who have preferences that accord with being a conformist do experience an employment penalty.

Suggested Citation

  • Battu, Harminder & Mwale, McDonald & Zenou, Yves, 2003. "Do Oppositional Identities Reduce Employment for Ethnic Minorities?," Working Paper Series 603, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0603
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nekby, Lena & Rödin, Magnus, 2007. "Acculturation Identity and Labor Market Outcomes," Research Papers in Economics 2007:7, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    2. Martin Kahanec & Mariapia Mendola, 2009. "Social determinants of labor market status of ethnic minorities in Britain," Research in Labor Economics, in: Ethnicity and Labor Market Outcomes, pages 167-195, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    3. Harris Selod & Yves Zenou, 2006. "City Structure, Job Search and Labour Discrimination: Theory and Policy Implications," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(514), pages 1057-1087, October.
    4. Clark, Ken & Drinkwater, Stephen, 2007. "Segregation preferences and labour market outcomes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 278-283, February.
    5. Nekby, Lena & Rödin, Magnus, 2010. "Acculturation identity and employment among second and middle generation immigrants," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 35-50, February.
    6. Antecol, Heather & Cobb-Clark, Deborah A., 2008. "Identity and racial harassment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(3-4), pages 529-557, June.
    7. Kohler, Pierre, 2012. "Three essays on the economic and cultural integration of migrants in Switzerland: putting into perspective the influence of economic discrimination and of host society culture," MPRA Paper 38129, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Smith, Tony E. & Zenou, Yves, 2003. "Spatial mismatch, search effort, and urban spatial structure," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 129-156, July.
    9. Delia Furtado, 2012. "Human Capital And Interethnic Marriage Decisions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 50(1), pages 82-93, January.
    10. Ken Clark & Stephen Drinkwater, 2009. "Dynamics and diversity: ethnic employment differences in England and Wales, 1991–2001," Research in Labor Economics, in: Ethnicity and Labor Market Outcomes, pages 299-333, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    11. Battu, Harminder & Seaman, Paul & Zenou, Yves, 2011. "Job contact networks and the ethnic minorities," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 48-56, January.
    12. Pierre Kohler, 2012. "Economic Discrimination and Cultural Differences as Barriers to Migrant Integration: Is Reverse Causality Symmetric?," IHEID Working Papers 07-2012, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    13. Pierre Kohler, 2012. "Economic Discrimination and Cultural Differences as Barriers to Migrant Integration: Is Reverse Causality Symmetric?," IHEID Working Papers 07-2012, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0603. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Elisabeth Gustafsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iuiiise.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.