Does Occupational Stress Play a Role in Forming Restrictionist Immigration Opinions?

ABSTRACT

This study extends the labor market competition perspective of immigration attitudes by examining the influence of occupational stress and employer-sponsored stress management programs on native-born, full-time workers’ opinions toward immigration levels. Binary logit and ordered logit models, with data from the 2018 General Social Survey, test the predictions of three occupational stress theories: job demands-control-support, effort-reward balance, and distributive justice. The results indicate that native-born, non-Hispanic white workers and native-born, Latino workers who are unable to develop their occupational skills on the job have greater odds of favoring reduced immigration. Job insecurity, lack of promotion opportunities, and poor intercolleague respect also negatively affect native-born, non-Hispanic white workers’ immigration opinions, while having to expend greater physical effort and having less time to complete the work negatively affect native-born, Latino workers’ immigration opinions. At the same time, native-born, non-Hispanic white workers who participate in stress management training have significantly greater odds of supporting increased immigration levels and significantly lower odds of desiring lower immigration levels. As immigration to the United States remains strong, understanding the social processes of native-born employee perceptions and the solutions to problematic intergroup relations may benefit individuals, businesses, and the economy.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Although the 2016 wave of the General Social Survey (GSS) did not have the employment questions that were used in the 2018 wave, the 2014 wave had a majority of them. Occupational stress and stress management programs had no statistically significant effect on immigration opinions in 2014 for native-born workers. These non-findings may indicate that the labor market competition perspective in general, and as represented more specifically by occupational stress, is theoretically weak in explaining the factors that shape immigration opinions. Or the non-findings may be due to a methodological limitation. The split samples in the 2014 wave made the sample sizes of respondents who were asked all the variables of interest in this study very small, smaller than the sample sizes in 2018. Or the non-findings in the 2014 wave may suggest that the statistically significant findings for occupational stress in the 2018 wave are in part a function of a period effect. The Trump Administration put sizable tariffs on products from China in 2018, initiating a trade war between the two countries. The result may have made occupational stress and stress management programs more salient for U.S. workers in 2018 compared to 2014.

² Constraining the samples by race and ethnicity offered the most efficient groupings to evaluate the effect of each of the 23 occupational stress variables and the other theoretical variables on immigration opinions. The other strategy would have been to include race as a covariate in the statistical models and create two-way interaction terms for each race and ethnic group and the 23 occupational stress variables and other theoretical variables. Given that the statistical models already have 45 variables in them, this latter strategy is less efficient because it more than doubles the number of variables in each model and also makes the models conditional, which changes the interpretations of the other coefficients in the models. Ultimately, however, the two-way interaction terms for the other racial minority groups (Black/African American, Asian, American Indian/Native American, and Multiracial) and occupational stress remained non-significant in predicting immigration opinions in the preliminary models.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Justin Allen Berg

Justin Allen Berg, PhD, is an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Dakota. His primary research focuses on understanding the factors that affect attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policy, from labor market context to interpersonal dynamics. His research team, funded by a National Science Foundation ADVANCE Catalyst grant, is currently examining the social processes of inequity experienced by women and foreign-born STEM faculty.