Publication Date

2015

Journal or Book Title

American Journal of Sociology

Abstract

The authors propose a strategy for observing and explaining workplace variance in categorically linked inequalities. Using Swedish economy-wide linked employer-employee panel data, the authors examinevariationinworkplacewageinequalitiesbetweennativeSwedes and non-Western immigrants. Consistent with relational inequality theory, the authors’ findings are thatimmigrant-native wagegaps vary dramatically across workplaces, even net of strong human capital controls. The authors also find that, net of observed and fixed-effect controls for individual traits, workplace immigrant-native wage gaps decline with increased workplace immigrant employment and managerial representation and increase when job segregation rises. These results are stronger in high-inequality workplaces and for white-collar employees: contexts in which one expects status-based claims on organizational resources, the central causal mechanism identified by relational inequality theory, to be stronger. The authors conclude that workplace variation in the non-Western immigrant-native wage gaps is contingentonorganizational variationinthe relativepower ofgroups and the institutional context in which that power is exercised.

Volume

120

Issue

4

Included in

Sociology Commons

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