British Journal of Industrial Relations 45:2 June 2007 00071080 pp.

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Immigration, Labour Markets and Employment Relations: Problems and Prospects

Patrick McGovern

Abstract In this review essay, I argue that immigration presents employment researchers with a promising strategic research site because it raises a number of theoretically signicant problems with mainstream economic approaches to labour and labour markets. Despite the tendency to view economic migrants as homo economicus personied, I argue that immigration brings the institutional nature of labour markets into sharp relief as it exposes, among other things, the inuence of the state, processes of labour market segmentation, and the role of trade union policy and practice. Having identied a number of empirical anomalies that contradict neoclassical economic theory, I proceed to sketch out three areas where a more institutionally oriented approach should prove more fruitful.

1. Introduction International migration, whether voluntary or involuntary, has become one of the most prominent and controversial issues of the twenty-rst century. Much of its prominence may be attributed to the current wave of international migration that has been building steadily over the past few decades. In 1960, for instance, there were approximately 75 million people living outside their usual country of residence; by 2005 this gure had more than doubled to 191 million.1 At the same time, the number of countries that host a signicant number of migrants has also increased: in 1960 some 30 countries hosted more than half a million immigrants each; by 2005 this too had doubled to 64 countries (UN 2006: 12). However, even increases of this magnitude cannot account for the controversy generated by the international movement of people when compared with that of products, ideas or even rms. Immigration, it seems, stirs age-old fears about outsiders or strangers,

Patrick McGovern is at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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who, all too often, are blamed for societys ills. Among other things, immigrants apparently take jobs, scrounge welfare benets, launch crime waves, and import ideas and practices that undermine the very fabric of society (e.g. Littlejohn 2003; Phillips 2003). Similar claims were made about earlier waves of immigration to Britain and the United States during the nineteenth century, but these appear to have been forgotten, possibly because the predicted fears never quite materialized (see e.g. Bennett 1988; Curtis 1971). Unlike those earlier waves of migration, the advent of the European Union and its common market for labour and goods has compounded these fears by fuelling the belief that member-states have lost the right to control their borders. In particular, the eastern expansion of the European Union has generated a substantial EastWest ow of migrants which, when combined with the recent accession of Romania and Bulgaria and the potential entry of Turkey, has turned migration into an issue central to the future of Europe, if not the central issue (Favell and Hansen 2002: 581). As an academic subject, immigration closely resembles industrial relations in that much of the research has been inuenced by the policy concerns and events associated with so-called social problems (Portes 1995: 2). Like other applied subjects, both have attracted the attention of scholars from across the social sciences and have generated a voluminous body of literature. However, immigration is strangely neglected by industrial relations scholars and only occasionally draws the interest of industrial sociologists.2 This omission becomes all the more striking once we acknowledge that immigration is, as the legendary US labour leader Samuel Gompers insisted, fundamentally a labour problem (Gompers 1925: 157). After all, most migrants move in order to nd work and much of the public concern about immigration focuses on the labour market consequences of an inux of foreign labour. By contrast, the inuence of economics is becoming increasingly pronounced, not only within the academic literature but also in the formulation of immigration policy (Massey et al. 1998: 19). This is not surprising in one respect as labour migrants are often described as the closest living embodiment of homo economicus that rational, selfseeking, amoral agent who propels economic models of human behaviour. At least on the surface, migrants appear to be motivated primarily by money and, as they are separated from their original social environments, care little about the status of their jobs, or the concerns of native-born workers. Nevertheless, I would like to argue that even economic migration, with its apparently economically driven behaviour, can be fruitfully examined without succumbing to the seductive simplications of neoclassical economics. In particular, I wish to argue that immigration presents employment researchers with a promising strategic research site (Merton 1973) precisely because it raises a number of theoretically signicant problems with approaches that treat labour primarily as a commodity. More specically, I shall argue that immigration brings the institutional nature of labour markets into sharp relief as it exposes, among other things, the inuence of the nation state,
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processes of labour market segmentation, and the role of trade union policy and practice. To that end, I shall begin by identifying some of the more obvious limitations in the way immigration is treated in the mainstream economics literature before sketching out three areas where a more institutionally oriented approach may prove to be particularly fruitful.

2. Homo economicus and the (im)mobility of labour Conventional wisdom suggests that immigrants are poor, have limited prospects in their country of origin, and so migrate to other countries where they may earn higher wages, even for relatively unskilled jobs.3 Initial formulations of the neoclassical economic model suggested that international migration is caused by differences in wage rates between countries. Countries with a large endowment of labour relative to capital will have a low equilibrium wage rate, and substantial unemployment, while those with an abundance of capital and, consequently, a more limited supply of labour will offer substantially higher wages. This wage differential will induce workers from poorer, low wage economies to move to high wage countries. Eventually, the interaction of the laws of supply and demand should reduce migration as the supply of labour in the low wage countries decreases (and wages increase) while that of the capital-rich economies increases (and wages decrease). In sum, migration is driven primarily by labour market mechanisms and, assuming the laws of supply and demand are in operation, international migration should decline over the long term (for a detailed review, see Massey et al. 1998: 1828). Subsequent formulations expanded the initial macroeconomic formulation by focusing on individual decision making. George Borjas, one of the leading economists of migration, has introduced the concept of a global migration market in which rational individuals calculate the relative costs and benets of staying relative to those of nding employment in a foreign destination (Borjas 1990). People migrate to those places where the expected discounted net returns are greatest over a set period of time. More specically, the process begins when an individual considers the level of wages for someone with similar skills and experience, the chances of obtaining employment and then subtracts the costs (both material and social) of making the journey. When the net benet is greater than the cost, then migration ensues. While income is undoubtedly a factor in migration, sociologists nd economic explanations troubling because they fail to account for some notable empirical ndings about international migration. Paradoxically, the rst is that most people do not migrate. The 191 million people who the UN estimates to be immigrants still amount to only three per cent of the worlds population (UN 2006: 1). This means that, in terms of economic costs and benets, a huge number of people behave in a way that can only be described as irrational, some of which may be attributed to a peculiar sentimental attachment to a country or place (i.e. home). The second empirical anomaly
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is that international labour migration originates largely in countries where wages are some way above those of the lowest countries. Part of the reason is that the very act of migration, whether legal or illegal, is an expensive undertaking for those who live in the worlds poorest nations. Although frequently underestimated, migration is a complex process that may involve expenditure in advance of moving (information, passports, etc.), on food and accommodation after arriving (which may be considerable, especially if in advance of employment) and, of course, on travel costs. The other reason is that migrants do not come from poor, remote places that are isolated from the world markets but from regions and countries that are experiencing substantial change as they become increasingly integrated into the international economy (Massey et al. 1998: 27788). Television and mass advertising, for instance, may generate feelings of relative deprivation by displaying goods and lifestyles that may be unattainable in developing countries. Given that many hold jobs before moving, migrants are, therefore, more often people who act out of an acute sense of relative deprivation rather than absolute poverty (see especially Portes and Rumbaut 2006: 1517). The inability of wage differentials alone to explain international migration is strikingly evident in one of the most prominent migration ows of our time: the large-scale migration of Mexicans to the United States. In a detailed study of 25 sending communities, Doug Massey and Kristin Espinoza nd that macroeconomic factors, such as wage differentials, fail to explain initial, repeat and return migration. Indeed, one of the extraordinary features about this ow of migrants is that it has increased at a time when real wages in the United States have been in decline. What Massey and Espinoza nd instead is that MexicoUS migration is more likely to be driven by three mutually reinforcing factors: market consolidation, human capital formation and social capital. In particular, the increasing integration of the two national economies, as well as the mechanization of several sectors of the Mexican economy, has displaced large numbers of workers and these workers are strongly inclined to move to the United States, especially if they have relatives there. Each act of migration creates additional social ties for future migrants, who in turn extend the range of social capital for further migrants. Consequently, international migration develops through a process of cumulative causation that gives it a powerful element of self-perpetuation. Indeed, the very experience of migrating, as well as the acquisition of knowledge about working practices in the United States, generates a form of migrationspecic capital that is itself strongly associated with repeat migration. Signicantly, both the human capital formed through migration and the creation of additional social ties among the migrant Mexican population have a signicantly greater inuence on the decision to migrate than differences in wages (Massey and Espinosa 1997). In short, wage differentials are far from being the only or even the dominant factor causing migration. This may come as a surprise because the prospect of better income features prominently in popular beliefs about migration. Certainly, few people migrate to countries where the expected wages are lower than those they left
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behind. Yet wage differentials explain relatively little by themselves. They do not, for instance, explain why migrants move to one afuent country rather than another.4 Nor do they consider the possibility that the labour market operates within parameters set by the nation state. The Politics of Markets An inuential strand of economics initiated by Ronald Coase in the 1930s assumes that markets are inevitable natural phenomena and it is the existence of rms that need to be explained (Coase 1937). In contrast, one of the dening ideas of the new economic sociology is that markets are far from inevitable or natural; they are socially and culturally constructed (Granovetter 1985; Smelser and Swedberg 2005). Similar, if less fashionable, versions of the same argument are already well known to scholars of industrial relations, as the institutional regulation of the labour market, notably by the state, employers and trade unions, as well as through social norms relating to custom and practice, restriction of output and wage differentials, has been one of the guiding themes in the subject since its foundation (e.g. Flanders and Clegg 1954; Kerr 1954). The signicance of this is that it reminds us that the market for labour is far from being the kind of disembedded, impersonal and mechanical entity depicted in the neoclassical abstraction of the free market. This observation may seem somewhat dated in the British context, where successive neoliberal governments have sought to deregulate the labour market by reducing the inuence of institutions that apparently inhibit the mobility of labour (see e.g. Smith and Morton 2006). Ironically, when it comes to access to the labour market, the mobility that is so widely encouraged by neoliberal regimes ends abruptly at the national border. For much of the recent past, Britain, like the United States and several other afuent Western countries, has introduced more and more restrictions on the cross-border movement of workers. Such measures typically include random inspections of workplaces, the purging of illegal labour from public service employment and the use of sanctions against employers of alien labour. More recent measures include the hiring of extra immigration ofcials and border police, extensions to their powers and the use of detention centres for those suspected of entering the country illegally. These latter measures, which are known as securitization of migration, have been accentuated in the aftermath of 9/11 and include a remarkable additional step that makes non-state actors, such as private organizations (e.g. airlines and haulage companies), as well as a wider range of public organizations (e.g. local health centres and universities), responsible for monitoring and reporting potential breaches (see e.g. Cornelius 2004; Guiraudon and Joppke 2001). As Massey and colleagues demonstrate, such policies conceive the international movement of people according to the blueprint laid down by the neoclassical economic model. By patrolling the border and penalizing employers, the state seeks to reduce the ow of foreign labour by driving up the costs of entry and reducing the benets of migration (Massey et al. 1998: 28889).
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3. Immigrants, wages and employment conditions If immigration and policies of immigration control, whether effective or otherwise, illustrate one way in which the labour market is politically constructed, research on immigrants and wages raises another, and perhaps, more fundamental problem with neoclassical theories. Returning to a point made earlier, neoclassical models predict a fall in wages as foreign-born workers increase the supply of labour. Of course, the assumption is that labour markets are generally, if not entirely, competitive and the price for labour behaves in much the same way as the price for any other commodity. The idea that an inux of immigrants will lead to a reduction in wages is, of course, also behind public fears about the impact of immigration and occasionally appears in anecdotes about immigrants pricing indigenous workers out of jobs. Nonetheless, the results of extensive research by labour economists are, for the most part, strikingly counterintuitive: overall, immigration has a negligible effect on wage rates. For instance, an inuential review of the international evidence by Friedberg and Hunt nds no support for the popular belief that immigrants have an adverse effect on the wages of the native born. Even those studies that report an effect acknowledge that it takes at least a 10 per cent increase in the fraction of immigrants in the population to reduce wages by 1 per cent (Friedberg and Hunt 1995: 42). Given the long and contentious history of immigration in the United States, it is not surprising to nd that it accounts for much of the leading research on this subject. In the absence of any general labour market effects, some American economists, such as David Card, have sought to examine the effects for different occupational groups at the city level. Again, the results point to relatively modest effects of immigrant inows on wages. However, an inux of immigrants may also have a modest, negative effect on the employment prospects of workers, although this is evident only at the bottom of the labour market for a handful of US cities that experienced a massive expansion in the supply of labour (Card 2001). Similar results have also been obtained in a wide-ranging econometric analysis of British data by a team of economists from University College London. In a report for the British Home Ofce, Christian Dustmann and colleagues could nd no convincing evidence that an inux of immigrants undermined the market for British-born workers. Although they examined average wages for manual and non-manual workers, for men and women, at both the county and national levels, Dustmann et al. (2004) found no instance where the presence of immigrants was associated with a fall in wages. If anything, they found a positive effect on the wages of native-born workers (Dustmann et al. 2004: 48). Although the effect is weak, they acknowledge that the result cannot easily be accommodated within conventional neoclassical labour market theory. Instead, they suggest that it may be due to migrants bringing skills that are complementary to those of the existing workforce or perhaps enhancing entrepreneurial activity. Finally,
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Dustmann and colleagues found no evidence to support the claim that immigrants displace native-born workers from the labour force or, indeed, those who arrived through previous waves of migration. The Wages of Migration Nonetheless, there is a substantial body of evidence to show that immigrants generally receive lower wages than native-born workers. How might we explain this persistent gap? An inuential, early study by the American labour economist Barry Chiswick examined the inuence of education, work experience and time in the host country for male immigrants. Chiswick (1978) found that education had a positive effect among immigrants, but crucially the inuence of education for immigrants is lower than that for the native born, a nding that has since been well documented (e.g. Bean and Stevens 2003; Dustmann et al. 2003; Portes and Rumbaut 2006). Generally, Chiswicks research showed that the earnings gap declined over time as immigrants accumulated work experience in the new country. Subsequent studies have conrmed the effects of education, language prociency, as well as the amount of time that had elapsed since migration (Portes and Rumbaut 2006: 8791). However, Chiswick also revealed another intriguing nding: the earnings gap for Mexicans did not decline substantially with time spent in the United States. This Mexican exception was, he suggested, the result of an ethnicgroup effect, as the earnings of second and third generations of Mexican immigrants are also lower than those of other white men of similar immigrant status (Chiswick 1978: 914). More recent US research by the sociologists Frank Bean and Gillian Stevens conrms that a signicant gap exists for Mexicans and that this is evident across all levels of education, including the university educated (Bean and Stevens 2003). A similar pattern is evident on this side of the Atlantic, although the nationalities of the foreign-born population differ dramatically. Generally, migrants have lower levels of employment, labour market participation and wages than the UK-born population, even when compared with people from the same ethnic groups who were born in the UK. In this case, however, it is the Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups who have the greatest and most persistent wage differences (Dustmann et al. 2003; Kempton 2002). The ndings on Mexicans in the United States, and on Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the UK, challenge the straight-line assimilation theories that held sway for much of the twentieth century (see e.g. Gordon 1964). Within the world of work, theories of assimilation indicated that the occupational attainment and earnings of immigrants and their descendants would converge with that of the majority group over time. During the 1970s and 1980s, a number of writers noted deviations from straight-line incorporation and concluded that familiarity with the language, customs and practices of the new country does not necessarily lead to convergence in the labour market or elsewhere. Persistent discrimination and structural barriers to equal
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opportunity in employment may, over a sustained period of time, lead to a process of segmented assimilation where some members of the group follow the classic straight line but others reject assimilation altogether and adopt an oppositional orientation (see Portes and Zhou 1993). Given the widely recognized gender gap in earnings, it is not surprising to nd that the wages of female migrants tend to lag behind those of their male counterparts as well as those of native-born women (Dustmann and Schmidt 2000; Portes and Rumbaut 2006: 97, 100). This is signicant because the proportion of women in the migrant population has been increasing steadily since the Second World War and now constitutes almost half of all migrants, with the proportion being slightly higher in developed countries (UN 2006: 3). In the past, women often migrated by following their husbands or fathers, but the proportion travelling independently has grown substantially in recent decades. Perhaps the most widely known example are Filipino women whose employment in domestic service across some 130 different countries represents one of the largest and widest ows of contemporary female migration (Castles and Miller 2003: 15759; Parrenas 2001: 1). Immigration has certainly had a huge inuence on the labour force participation of women, with higher rates being evident for those who migrate than for those who remain at home (Pedraza 1991: 31314). Yet the participation rates of migrant women still lag behind those born in the host country and they are also more likely to either work part-time or assist in the family business. While male migrants tend to be concentrated in a limited range of occupations, the choice for women is even more restricted. Because of the double-negative of being both female and foreign born, they tend to congregate in a handful of female-dominated occupations, such as domestic service, apparel manufacturing, hotels and catering, and health services (Dumont and Liebig 2005; Dustmann et al. 2003: 2932). In addition to those who work in the sex industry, those employed in domestic service are vulnerable to mistreatment (especially if undocumented) because they are often employed on their own and, if they live with the family, may nd it more difcult to separate their private and working lives. For instance, they could be asked to provide a 24-hour service and holiday support, if not worse (Anderson 2000; Parrenas 2001).5 How might we explain these curious ndings? Why does immigration not reduce the wages of indigenous workers even though immigrants tend to receive lower pay? One answer, which has already been mentioned, is that foreign and native-born workers do not generally compete for the same jobs. To put it another way, immigrants take jobs that others leave behind. It is to this argument that we now turn.

4. Labour market segmentation and occupational segregation One of the major problems with the neoclassical conception of labour markets is that it removes workers and their work from the wider social
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context. Consequently, our understanding of social behaviour is always constrained because of the inability to account for the inuence of social structure or, indeed, of the interaction between individual agency and social structure. During the early 1970s, institutional economists sought to rectify this by devising a theory of dual or segmented labour markets to account for persistent social divisions, such as in the employment of men and women, that could not be captured by standard neoclassical models (Doeringer and Piore 1971). Some years later, one of the leading gures in this initiative, Michael Piore, drew on labour market segmentation theory to explain some of the more enduring ndings on the employment of immigrants (Piore 1979). In particular, he sought to explain why they are often concentrated in semiskilled, repetitive jobs with limited job security; why the wages in such jobs rarely rise but frequently fall; and why migrants take work of low social status. For sociologists, one of the strengths of Piores analysis is that he recognizes that work is more than a set of job tasks; it also marks the social status of the worker and this helps explain why native-born workers often resist taking menial, service sector jobs. But perhaps the most striking feature of Piores theory is that international migration is not caused by push factors, such as low wages or unemployment. Rather it results from the inbuilt demand for certain kinds of disposable labour that is an inherent feature of advanced industrial economies (see also Miles 1990; Peach 1968; Sassen 2001). Piore identies three reasons why the demand for foreign-born workers is chronic and unavoidable (Piore 1979: 2643). The rst is the rather conventional claim that migration is simply a response to labour shortages that occur during periods of prosperity. Typically, when the economy expands, native workers gravitate towards the better-paying and more prestigious positions that become more widely available. Employers facing shortages must then decide whether to raise wages, replace labour with capital or recruit foreign workers. However, capital is relatively expensive and raising wages may trigger knock-on claims by groups of higher status who wish to maintain wage differentials with those whom they perceive to be of lower rank. The easiest and least costly solution is, therefore, to recruit workers from other countries. The second reason for the inherent demand for foreign labour stems from the motivating effects of hierarchy. Occupational hierarchies are, according to Piore, critical for motivation because people work not only for money, but also for the accumulation and maintenance of social prestige. Acute motivational problems exist at the bottom of hierarchies because there is little status to maintain and few opportunities for advancement. What employers need, therefore, are those who view low status jobs simply as a means to earn money. Again, foreign-born workers satisfy this requirement, at least in the early stages of their migratory careers when they are more concerned with economic survival than social status. The nal reason relates to what segmentation theorists consider to be the inherent duality between capital and labour. Capital, as a xed factor of
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production, cannot be kept idle because its owners will have to bear substantial costs. By contrast, labour, as a variable factor of production, can be laid off because it bears the costs of its own unemployment. Whenever possible, employers use capital to meet the stable, xed part of demand and labour for that which uctuates. This dualism creates a division in the labour force between those who work in the capital-intensive primary sector and those who are employed in the labour-intensive secondary segment. The former enjoy secure jobs, with regular increments in pay and promotion while the latter, who are more disposable, have poor wages and conditions and lack opportunities for promotion. Accordingly, immigrants are concentrated in the secondary sector because it is more likely to have openings and they are less troubled by the prestige of their work, at least in the initial stages. Taken in its entirety, Piores original application of segmentation theory offers a compelling explanation of not only how international migration originates but also why competition between native and foreign-born workers seems to be blunted. In doing so, it provides a plausible explanation as to why immigration has a negligible effect on the earnings and employment prospects of indigenous workers. Although theories of labour market segmentation have been heavily criticized, notably for their economic determinism and preoccupation with employer behaviour (e.g. Rubery 1988), I believe Piores original adaptation provides us with a starting point for a more sociologically oriented theory of labour divisions. Such a theory should also be able to account for divisions emanating from the supply of labour, of which the most prominent are those that segregate the labour force into separate and non-competing groups. In other words, we need to combine the institutional economists focus on the demand side with the sociologists interest in processes of occupational segregation on the supply side. Such a theory has, I believe, come a step closer with the publication of Waldinger and Lichters How the Other Half Works, a detailed qualitative study of how unskilled migrant labour continues to nd employment within a post-industrial economy. To understand how migrants get jobs in an economy for which their skills are not apparently suited, Waldinger and Lichter embark on a deceptively simple, but highly fruitful, course of action: they ask employers why they hire immigrants. The answer to this question helps esh out how the interaction of the supply and demand sides of the labour market contribute to processes of labour market segmentation. Without going into too much detail, I would like to draw attention to the role of ethnic hiring queues, social networks and on-the-job training (see, especially, Waldinger and Lichter 2003: 22025).6 The rst source of labour segregation, which is based on the concept of hiring queues, provides an insight into how employers discriminate in a race-conscious society like the USA where entire ethnic groups are ranked according to socially meaningful but arbitrary stereotypes. Although employers invariably seek to allocate jobs to the best workers, the best workers are not dened purely on the basis of aptitude, skill or experience.
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Where qualications are broadly equal, employers select those from the top-ranked group rst and the rest follow according to how their racial or ethnic grouping are ranked in the wider society (Waldinger and Lichter 2003: 89). Here the perceived attitude of the worker was often a major priority for employers. Excerpts from interviews revealed that white workers dont want to get their hands dirty, that Latinos like to work and that African Americans are, ironically, too Americanized and so inclined to demand better wages and benets (Waldinger and Lichter 2003: 17677). While having the right attitude is important for most jobs, Waldinger and Lichter argue that it is even more important for semi- and unskilled jobs because these require little previous knowledge or experience and much of what needs to be known can be learned from other employees. The second major source of segregation stems from the use of social networks to ll jobs. One of the central arguments of the new economic sociology, which originated with Granovetters pioneering study of job searching, is that social networks, rather than markets, are frequently the mechanism by which individuals nd jobs (Granovetter 1974). Waldinger and Lichters research indicates that both immigrants and employers nd considerable value in hiring through social networks. Even where employers do not have an explicit policy of this kind, they often nd that when they have vacancies (or even just about to announce vacancies) they are approached by members of the existing workforce who have the proverbial cousin back home who is ideally suited to the job. Employers, for their part, are happy to hire such workers, not only because it saves on recruitment costs but also because they feel they are hiring a known quantity. However, an unintended consequence of this practice is that information about jobs may become restricted to the ethnic groups that already have a foothold within the rm. In this way, hiring through social networks can become an exclusionary practice that gives the rm a nepotistic cast. The nal mechanism concerns the acquisition of skills or knowledge on the job. Work, as Waldinger and Lichter note, is a fundamentally social activity and this is most evident in the process by which employees share knowledge about how to do their jobs. Even supposedly unskilled jobs involve tasks, routines and other kinds of knowledge that can take some time to learn (e.g. whom to ask when dealing with a problem). The co-operation of other workers is central to this process of learning the ropes and the task is often easier when employees share social ties, such as race or ethnicity. Lack of such ties may make the workplace less attractive for new members or, in more extreme cases, see them isolated or frozen out. Accordingly, employers often feel obliged to take the views of their workforce into consideration when making hiring decisions. However, when this tendency is combined with the use of hiring networks, job-hungry immigrant groups may capture the hiring process and this can have negative consequences for the employer. For instance, the rm may develop a reputation as a Mexican- or Vietnamese-only employer, which may prove costly if the rm deals directly with the public (e.g. a retailer).
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Waldinger and Lichter acknowledge that the inuence of these processes may be curtailed in larger, more formal organizations where managers are less inclined to draw on hiring networks derived from the existing workforce. Although information about potential vacancies may inuence the kind of candidates who hear about potential jobs, formalized selection procedures reduce the possibility of a potential clash between employees and employers about the kind of workers that should be hired. Nonetheless, one of the intriguing features of the research is that even the recruitment practices of large organizations may be more reliant on networks than even their human resource departments may appreciate.

5. The trade union problem If employers have a long-standing reputation for preferring immigrants over native-born workers, then the reverse is equally true of trade unions. Although seldom stated in formal terms, the traditional trade union perspective on immigration is again one where migrants are viewed as homo economicus personied. Not only are they motivated by money, and willing to accept low wages, they are also deemed to be highly individualistic, which makes them difcult to unionize. Unions, therefore, fear that admitting large numbers of migrants will exert a downward pressure on wages, undermine their bargaining power and divide the working class. Consequently, trade unions have historically been among those who are leading calls for a restriction on immigration (Dummett and Nicol 1990: 94101; Milkman 2006: 11819). Immigration is a thorny issue for trade unionism because such actions contradict notions of international solidarity that are often part of union ideology. By calling for restrictions on the ow of immigrants, unions are, in effect, seeking to preserve the privileges of one section of the working class at the expense of another. However, accepting immigration presents a different set of problems. To put it briey, immigration presents trade unions with three dilemmas (Penninx and Roosblad 2000: 412). At the outset, they must decide if they should resist immigration or co-operate with employers in the recruitment of migrant workers. A second problem arises after immigrants arrive in signicant numbers. Immigrants have a reputation for being difcult to organize, so a decision to continue opposing immigration may make it even more difcult to recruit from a potentially valuable source of new members. Finally, having recruited immigrants, unions must then decide if they should devise special policies that meet their particular concerns (e.g. on racial discrimination, ethnic monitoring) or insist on the same, general treatment for all workers. Despite the reputation for being unorganizable, there is little empirical support for the idea that immigrants, including those from ethnic minorities, are inimical to trade unionism. In Britain, for instance, the fourth national
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survey of ethnic minorities by the Policy Studies Institute found that union membership rates were higher among most ethnic minority groups, notably among African-Caribbeans, than among white employees. The exceptions were the Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups, where union membership was noticeably lower. Even when allowance is made for the over-representation of ethnic minorities in certain occupations, trade union representation remains higher, a pattern that has remained in place for some time (Brown 1984; Modood et al. 1997; see also Milkman 2006: 12633 on the United States). If these ndings are to be taken seriously, then the problem of immigration and trade unionism switches from being one of immigrants to one of trade unions. This, indeed, was also the conclusion of an early British study of West Indian and Asian immigrants in the city of Birmingham. Rex and Tomlinson (1979) found that their subjects not only joined trade unions but participated actively. This led them to argue that the problem lies with trade unions, who in failing to support immigrant workers, particularly at times of crisis, help maintain the vulnerability of much immigrant employment (Rex and Tomlinson 1979: 118). One particular complaint was that trade unions failed to support their black and Asian members when they pursued complaints of race discrimination. In some infamous cases, the union hierarchy was implicated. Rex and Tomlinson documented a number of protracted disputes where black and Asian union members acted on the knowledge that the mostly white trade union ofcials had colluded with managers to provide preferential treatment to white workers on pay and access to promotion (Rex and Tomlinson 1979: 12226). Disputes of this kind led a number of writers to conclude that racist treatment by trade unions was evidence of how the white working class continues to accrue economic benets from exclusionary practices directed towards immigrants (Gilroy 1987: 21545; Virdee 2000). There are, however, signs that trade unions have begun to resolve these dilemmas in ways that suggest a break with the fear-driven assumptions of the past. Perhaps the most striking is the landmark decision by the American Federation of LaborCongress of Industrial Organizations (AFLCIO) to reverse its historic opposition to immigration in the United States. Following on the momentum generated by the remarkable Justice for Janitors campaign, in which a mostly immigrant group of Los Angeles ofce cleaners won a substantial pay rise after a bitter three-week strike (Milkman 2006: 15566), a number of pro-immigrant unions within the AFLCIO argued that the labour movement needed to embrace immigrants if it were to survive. After some lively discussions, the AFLCIO eventually passed a resolution in 2000 calling for the repeal of the long-standing policy of supporting sanctions against employers of immigrant labour. Since then, the nearly moribund US labour movement has initiated a series of increasingly pro-immigrant policies (e.g. calling for the normalization of undocumented workers) that have had some surprising consequences. For instance, unions that cover industries with a high proportion of immigrants, such as the Service Employees International Union, have had a dramatic rise in membership levels (Milkman 2006: 147).
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Similarly, the British trade unions and the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) have gradually moved towards a position that is much more sympathetic to migrants seeking employment in Britain (Virdee 2000; Wrench 2004). In 1996, the TUC opposed the then Conservative governments introduction of sanctions against employers and continues to campaign against attempts to turn employers into immigration police. While it supports a policy of managed migration, the TUC, nevertheless, continues to draw attention to the plight of migrant workers through high-prole campaigns and reports (e.g. TUC 2002). Also, in 2001, the TUC Annual Congress agreed to change its rules so that all afliate unions would be obliged to promote equality, although many unions had already set up separate committees to deal with race as part of a wider interest in equal opportunities (Wrench 2004). Of course, all of this raises the question of why trade unions have begun to embrace immigrants after decades of suspicion. This, indeed, is but one of the areas where we need further research on the labour market incorporation of migrants. 6. Three areas for further research Immigration, as I argued at the outset, presents employment researchers with a strategic research site (Merton 1973) because it exposes the institutional framework within which the labour market operates. In particular, it brings into sharp relief the problem of access to the labour market and the way this is shaped by the nation state, as well as the questions of whether, and to what extent, the labour market is really a competitive arena in which workers compete with each other across social and economic boundaries. Having reviewed a wide range of literature on these subjects, I would like to conclude by identifying a number of possible lines of enquiry in the three areas that I have reviewed: wages, labour market segmentation, and trade union policy and practice. The rst area concerns the vexed issue of the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers. As we saw earlier, labour economists have repeatedly found that international migration has little overall inuence, yet the question persists because the results contradict the basic assumptions of neoclassical economics. The answer, I suggest, may come from ne-grained, intensive studies of wage-setting processes among employers of migrant labour. But such studies need to start with some basic, preliminary questions, such as, why do employers hire immigrants? Do they, for instance, hire them with a view to reducing labour costs? If so, how do they do this without unsettling their existing workforce? In this regard, I would not be surprised to learn that few employers reduce wages and even those are likely to be specic to cost-conscious labour-intensive industries, such as construction, contract cleaning and catering. Given the rich tradition of research on wage setting in industrial relations, I think scholars in that area are very well placed to resolve this theoretical conundrum.
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Of course, wages are important, yet they are but one measure of labour market success. Occupational attainment, especially access to positions of power and prestige, and the general process of occupational segregation (both vertical and horizontal) are essential in understanding how immigrants are incorporated in the labour market. Here we need a much more sophisticated theory of labour market divisions than that initiated by the institutional economists. I highlighted the work of Waldinger and Lichter as an example of a more sociologically oriented approach that may, in conjunction with Piores work, provide the basis for a new programme of research in this area. Signicantly, both draw our attention to the role that social status plays in blunting competition between native and foreign-born workers. Other important variables include language, hiring queues, social networks and on-the-job training. Theoretical work of this kind, which identies and explains the causal mechanisms driving processes of segregation, is essential if we are to understand ethnic disparities in occupational attainment. If immigration is in important respects a matter of labour, then it is extraordinary that the literatures on immigration and trade unionism come together so rarely. To return to a point made earlier, I think the rst task is to understand the approach that trade unions take towards immigrants and ethnic minorities before subsequently examining how and why this has changed over time. While it may be tempting to surmise that an increasingly pro-immigrant stance is the direct result of a collapse in membership, this does not explain why the AFLCIO, for instance, continued to insist on immigration restrictions long after their membership had declined. I would, therefore, wish to see consideration given to the way union ofcials frame the discussion about immigration, how this relates to policies on discrimination, and, indeed, to the structure, values and political orientations of trade unions generally. Here cross-national comparisons of the kind initiated by Penninx and Roosblad (2000) should be revealing given national differences in union ideology, structure and, indeed, in the composition of immigrant populations (Wrench 2004 provides a rare example). The second gap in the literature concerns the social, political and economic conditions that enable, or impede, immigrant unionization (see also Milkman 2000: 23). Huge progress has been made over the past couple of decades in identifying factors associated with union membership generally. Signicantly, theoretical developments have followed advances in empirical research, with sophisticated institutional theories being developed to overcome the limitations of thin rational choice theories (e.g. Ebbinghaus and Visser 1999; Western 1997). Similar work is now required for distinct subpopulations of the labour force, particularly when unions have traditionally viewed some of these with suspicion. Finally, given the number of myths that exist about immigrants, it is inevitable that research on the labour market incorporation of migrants will challenge and, perhaps, occasionally shatter some popular myths. At a time when the very idea of social science is under threat and distinctions between scientic and lay knowledge are elided, the identication of false and
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prejudicial beliefs becomes even more important. Immigration, to my mind, presents us with a wonderful opportunity for doing this, provided we do not let pro- or anti-immigrant sentiment colour our analysis. Sadly, the subject of immigration is so controversial that even a conservative position on the aims of social science may seem like a radical political statement. But then, challenging the status quo is never easy. Final version accepted on 24 January 2007.

Acknowledgements This article was written during a Leverhulme-funded (Study Abroad) Fellowship at the Department of Sociology, Princeton University. I would like to thank Ed Heery for advice and Pat Carr and Krisztina Csedo for providing detailed comments at incredibly short notice. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes
1. In producing these estimates, the United Nations (UN) uses the widely accepted denition of an immigrant as anyone who changes his or her country of usual residence for a period of more than 12 months. 2. With the possible exception of geography, the subject of migration has generally been neglected by British social science. One of the few British specialists on the subject, Robert Miles, claims that this reects the dominance of the race relations perspective, which focuses on the problematic presence of coloured peoples, and the hegemonic assumption that Britain has evolved as a nation state in the absence of any large-scale, inward migration of people (Miles 1990: 283). 3. This paper focuses on labour migrants who, unlike refugees and asylum seekers, are relatively free to decide whether, and to where, they should migrate. For purposes of brevity, I do not consider professional or entrepreneurial migrants as they constitute a small proportion of overall immigration and tend to achieve considerable economic success over the long term. Portes and Rumbaut (2006: 1934) provide a useful discussion of the different types of immigrants and their experiences. 4. Japan is a notable anomaly here because it is a rich country in proximity to several poor countries and yet immigration is less than 2 per cent (see Castles and Miller 2003: 16465). 5. Some of the recent rise in domestic service may be attributed to the growth of dual-career couples who resolve conicts over the household division of labour by hiring nannies, cleaners and cooks. As many of these workers are young female migrants, domestic service provides a particularly striking example of the idea that immigrants take work that those in more afuent societies leave behind (Anderson 2000: 1621; Parrenas 2001: 7276). 6. I neglect the role of language because the argument is fairly intuitive (see Waldinger and Lichter 2003: 6380).
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