Abstract
The purpose of this study is to determine whether a labor market penalty exists for members of immigrant groups as a result of being phenotypically different from white Americans. Specifically, the authors examine the link between skin shade, perhaps the most noticeable phenotypical characteristic, and wages for immigrants from five regions: (1) Europe and Central Asia; (2) China, East Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific; (3) Latin America and the Caribbean; (4) Sub-Saharan Africa; and (5) the Middle East and North Africa. Using data from the New Immigrant Survey, a nationally representative multi-cohort longitudinal study of new legal immigrants to the United States, the authors find a skin shade penalty in wages for darker immigrants. However, disaggregating by region of origin shows that this finding is driven exclusively by the experience of immigrants from Latin America; the wage penalty for skin tone is substantial for self-reported nonblack Latin American immigrants. The effects of colorism are much less pronounced or nonexistent among other national-origin populations. Furthermore, although a skin shade penalty is not discernible among African immigrants, findings show that African immigrants experience a racial wage penalty.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 87-105 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Sociology of Race and Ethnicity |
Volume | 2 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 2016 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Anthropology
- Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
Keywords
- United States
- discrimination
- earnings
- immigrants
- skin shade