Occupational Linguistic Niches and the Wage Growth of Latino Immigrants

Abstract

Does the concentration of recent Latino immigrants into occupational linguistic niches-occupations with large numbers of other Spanish speakers-restrict their wage growth? On the one hand, it is possible that Latino immigrants who are concentrated in jobs with large numbers of Spanish speakers may have less onthe-job exposure to English, which may isolate them socially and linguistically and limit their subsequent economic mobility. On the other hand, working in linguistic niches can also be beneficial for upwardly mobile immigrants if it allows them to gain a foothold in the United States while they improve their English skills and develop labor market experience. Using data from the 1996, 2001 and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we test for the effect of working in occupational linguistic niches on wages and wage growth. The results show that while workers in linguistic niche occupations earn lower wages on average, they do not experience lower rates of wage growth over time. Moreover, we find that about 20 percent of workers who start the 4-year SIPP panel in linguistic niches experience occupational mobility that reduces the percentage of workers speaking Spanish in their occupation by over 10 percent over the course of the study, and these "movers" have higher levels of wage growth than other workers in the sample.

Communication flows and the durability of a transnational social field

“…We collected the NSIT data in three stages using a “link-tracing” sampling approach starting in the destination. Overall, the success of the NSIT in collecting network data from a hard to reach migrant population led to additional work on improving the precision and accuracy of network-based sampling methods (Mouw and Verdery 2012; Merli et al 2016). The first phase of the survey began in North Carolina in spring 2010 by interviewing 10 original “seeds” from the origin city in Guanajuato who were selected from contacts obtained during prior ethnographic fieldwork within this community.…”

Linguistic Employment Niches: Southern Dialect across Industries

“…Even stigmatized dialects offer value in the linguistic marketplace, such as warmth and pleasantness in the case of southern speech (Fridland et al 2005; Kinzler and DeJesus 2013), which are perceive to be beneficial for performing job tasks in specific industries (such as law and government). As such, future research should consider the meanings conveyed by specific dialect features, how these meanings align with boundaries between good and bad jobs (Kalleberg 2009) and how this process can result in occupational linguistic niches (Mouw and Chavez 2012).…”

“…Work can also involve interaction with multiple discursive domains (through engagement with customers or coworkers in different jobs), which requires workers to “style shift” 1 (i.e., alter their speech patterns) to navigate different domains (Eustace 2012). Consequently, linguistic niches (Mouw and Chavez 2012) may develop for certain sectors of the labor market in which the vernacular dialect of a region may be more valuable, even if those linguistic varieties are not valued within a wider national linguistic marketplace.…”

“…In the aggregate, workers with higher English language proficiency receive higher wages in the U.S. labor market (Chiswick and Miller 2005, 2010). However, occupations with lower English proficiency requirements may act as “occupational linguistic niches” acting to increase wage group over time (Mouw and Chavez 2012). These are important insights, but they are insufficient for understanding how factors such as dialect variation within a language contribute to cultural boundary maintenance in employment.…”

Older Latinos

“…Many from this third wave are now in their late 50s and approaching old age with a lack of economic and sometimes familial resources (Perez, 1986). Compared with Hispanic immigrants in general, Cubans tend to have a greater likelihood for improved socioeconomic status, and thus viewed as an advantaged minority (Motel, 2010; Mouw & Chavez, 2014).…”