Gendered segmented assimilation: earnings trajectories of African immigrant women and men

ABSTRACT

Racial stratification in immigrant earnings has been widely influential in theories of immigrant socioeconomic assimilation, but discussions of how racial stratification might differ by gender are underdeveloped. Segmented assimilation theory attempts to explain the underlying mechanisms that cause racial disparities, but it fails to incorporate gendered dynamics like occupational sex segregation and the feminization of particular labour flows. In this paper, we address that gap. Using data from the 1990 decennial census and the American Community Survey in 2009–11, we compare the earnings of black and white African migrants to US-born blacks and whites separately by gender. Our findings indicate that black African migrant women experience no racial disadvantage in their earnings, but black African migrant men do. Our results highlight the importance of examining racial differences in immigrant earnings interacting with gender.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• gender
• race
• segmented assimilation
• earnings
• intersectionality

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Developing the Field of Gender and Migration: Working Toward Innovative Methodologies and Analytical Techniques Conference in February 2016 at the University of California, Irvine. We are grateful for the feedback by organizers and other presenters. We are also grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers. Responsibility for the contents of this article is entirely ours.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. There were significant racial differences in country of origin; 65.2 per cent of white African migrants were born in South Africa, while black African migrants were more dispersed across countries of birth with 35.2 per cent born in Nigeria, 18.0 per cent born in Ethiopia, and 11.2 per cent born in Ghana, with the remainder from other countries.

2. The difference between average African and US-born women’s earnings ($10,644.93) is greater than the difference between average white and black women’s earnings ($3,526.71).