Exploited into silence: how perceived organizational exploitation drains the voice of migrant workers, and why vulnerability deepens the harm

Purpose Migrant workers in precarious employment face exploitation, but whether this silences voice – their key response when exit is blocked – remains unexamined. Employer-tied legal status, constrained mobility and scarce alternatives severely restrict, and in some cases foreclose, exit. Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study tests whether perceived exploitation suppresses voice via psychological distress, moderated by perceived vulnerability. Design/methodology/approach A moderated-mediation model was tested with 3-wave, time-lagged data from 330 first-generation migrant workers in agriculture, construction, hospitality, production and logistics across Southern Europe, recruited through migrant social-media networks. Hypotheses were tested using covariance-based structural equation modeling with bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals. Findings Perceived organizational exploitation was positively related to psychological distress, which in turn was negatively related to both promotive and prohibitive voice. Psychological distress fully mediated the exploitation–voice relationships. Employee vulnerability moderated the exploitation–distress path and the indirect effects, such that the silencing of voice through distress was significantly stronger for more vulnerable workers. Practical implications Because exploitation can silence workers by depleting their psychological resources, organizations must remove exploitative conditions before voice initiatives can succeed and concentrate well-being support, secure contracts and confidential reporting on the most vulnerable migrant employees; persistent silence warrants proactive inspection rather than reassurance. Originality/value The study theorizes migrant workers as a resource context with structurally constrained – and in some cases foreclosed – exit, extending COR theory by identifying psychological distress as the depletion mechanism linking exploitation to voice withdrawal, reframing voice as resource-contingent and testing the differential-vulnerability corollary in a population where low resources are structural, not incidental.