Immigration and the Underclass

Bibliographic Data

ID9748645
AuthorsRobert D Reischauer (Economic Studies Program of the Brookings Institution, corresponding author)
Year1989
Volume501
Issue1
Pages120-131
Publication date1989-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7162 • E-ISSN: 1552-3349
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0002716289501001008
OpenAlexW2148451250
LanguageEN
Citations received4

The size and nature of recent immigration to the United States have raised the possibility that immigrants have diminished the labor market opportunities of low-skilled, native minority workers and, thereby, might have contributed to the emergence of the urban underclass. To the extent that immigrants and native workers are substitute factors of production, immigrants may reduce the wage rates of native labor, increase their unemployment, lower their labor force participation, undermine working conditions, and reduce rates of internal mobility. While casual empiricism would seem to support the notion that immigrants have depressed the opportunities of low-skilled native workers, careful and sophisticated analyses by a number of social scientists provide little evidence that immigrants have had any significant negative impacts on the employment situation of black Americans. Thus competition from unskilled immigrants should not be included on the list of factors that have facilitated the growth of the underclass

Casual · Competition (biology · Demographic economics · Economic growth · Economics · Immigration · Labour economics · Political science · Underclass · Unemployment · Wage · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

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