Discrimination against Hispanics and Eastern European Immigrants in the United States: Evidence from a Field Experiment

How do race and foreign-born status shape labor market outcomes? Existing frameworks about discrimination against immigrants posit that the further people are racially and socioculturally from the “mainstream,” the more discrimination they will experience. To date, we lack a direct empirical test of how race and foreign-born status combine in a causal manner in hiring. To fill this empirical gap, I use insights from status aggregation theory and racial boundary formation to develop and test empirical predictions about how race and nativity status combine in hiring. I test these hypotheses using data from a large-scale field experiment in 18 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas in semi-skilled jobs. Results from the audit study show that employers discriminate based on nativity status and that these effects are similar for Hispanic and Eastern European immigrants. I discuss the implications of these findings for theories of immigrant incorporation and literature on employer hiring decisions.