The distribution of white and non-white labour has fluctuated around the numbers during the history of the US. While deunionization and decisions on outsourcing have been pointed at as causes of structural job polarization since 1960, the controversial impact of immigration remains ambiguous, being both a cause and victim of this shift by sustaining the proliferation of low-wage jobs based on skills and racial niches.
To understand the numerousness of high and low-paid jobs, we have to analyse what enabled the American labour market to switch to discriminatory growing extremes.
Between 1960-70, the US experienced an upturn in middle-skilled sectors, following …show more content…
However, the emphasis of the discriminatory distribution and proliferation of dead-end non-white jobs, wasn’t placed upon phenotypes, but upon skills, racial niches and fewer opportunities provided.
Low-skilled labour supply substantially increased in the US as the majority of the numerous newcomers during the 1990s were unskilled job-seekers. (Bean et al. 2004 p505-506) The key issue with immigration justified by labour-searching is that regardless of the wage, people are willing to work, accepting jobs that the host population dismisses as their new-country conditions would always be better than the same-job performance at home, (Lichter & Waldigner, 2003 p4,9) making them seem docile, desperate, pliable.
This, combined with the low minimum wage at the time and new conditions derived from deunionization, empowered the proliferation of the new type of bottom-jobs. However, the representation of non-skilled whites is almost negligible …show more content…
Growing low-end immigrant-jobs are the ensuing outcome of a high willingness to work and skill/educational-bias that set barriers.
In conclusion, the polarization the US experienced results from decisions on outsourcing and consequent deunionization that allowed employers to set competitive wages in the less-skilled sectors while a high demand for new-technology-based jobs helped stagnate bottom tiers. The dual impact of immigration sees low-skilled populations enter a country willing to work in low-paid jobs and accepting employer conditions derived from the job evolution in the US, increasing low-skilled labour supply and becoming enmeshed in society. This set even more educational barriers between the home and arriving populations.
Thus immigrants become portrayed as victims, stuck in unprotected bottom-occupations because of their degree of skills, but also as helpers of the proliferation and conquest of low-wage work in the