Abstract
Milkman’s book presents a cogent historical sociological argument regarding the main driver of low wage migration to the USA since the 1970s. Her argument that the growth of immigration is due to employer demand for low wage workers contributes to multi-disciplinary theories of migration, which attempt to explain the root causes of international migration. While the role of immigration policy in facilitating legal immigration and producing undocumented immigration is noted, the central argument is that immigration is mainly a response to labour demand, rather than a manifestation of strong push factors in sending countries. Indeed, the simple fact that levels of undocumented migration to the USA fell during the Great Recession is strong evidence for this assertion.
Existing demand-based theories of migration maintain that international labour migration is the result of demand for low wage, flexible workers in postindustrial societies and native workers’ refusal to take up low paid, low status jobs. It has, furthermore, been argued that variation in labour market institutions across countries results in varying demand for migrant workers by structuring the quality of jobs and the availability of local workers. Milkman’s study contributes to this literature by identifying the origins of the downgrading of wages, benefits and working conditions in particular US occupations/sectors since the 1970s, which led to a shrinking of the available labour supply. The overarching aim of the book is, however, a political one. Milkman provides a concise, readable, evidence-based counter-narrative to the ‘immigrant threat narrative’, arguing that poorly educated US born workers should direct their anger towards employers for degrading their jobs and promoting policies, which foster income inequality, rather than towards immigrants who have filled the resulting low wage jobs refuted by Americans.
Milkman’s carefully researched qualitative case studies of different sectors and occupations, based on existing literature, media reports and some descriptive data, are persuasive accounts of the development of low wage work in the USA since the 1970s and the movement of migrant workers into these jobs. A precise focus on the timings of various developments makes her qualitative case studies particularly compelling. She argues that the correlations between labour market regulation, unionisation and declining inequality between the mid-1930s and the 1970s (the ‘New Deal’ era) and a restrictive immigration policy and between a liberalisation of immigration policy in 1965 and a decline in wages, benefits and working conditions in particular sectors/occupations do not equate to a negative effect of immigration on the labour market. In fact, de-unionisation, deregulation and the degrading of jobs, which had provided high quality employment to poorly educated American men during the New Deal era, occurred at the instigation of employers from the 1970s onwards prior to the arrival of large numbers of labour migrants. She makes the same argument with regards to largely female services jobs in domestic work and restaurants, which grew as a result of a policy induced rise in inequality, at the same time as the civil rights movement created more opportunities in higher status occupations for African American and Mexican American women, thereby creating a demand for migrant workers. With important insights for the literature on migrant integration and job quality in the USA, Milkman also discusses union, worker centre and the immigrant rights movement organisation and advocacy. Her explanation for immigrants’ comparatively high receptivity to unions, encompassing strong social networks, labour militancy in origin countries and stigmitisation, is convincing.
Future research can bring more evidence in support of Milkman’s thesis. In particular, the argument that native workers refuted the jobs, which immigrants then filled, is supported by reference to academic assertions, employer testimony and some data on unsuccessful recruitment drives. The voice of US born workers is, however, absent. Indeed, the inclusion of historical and contemporary interview/survey data on US born workers’ perspectives on the occupations of interest and data on the higher wage/status jobs into which poorly educated US born workers moved after exiting from (newly degraded) low wage jobs would strengthen the argument.
There are, furthermore, two areas of nuance, where further elaboration would bring insight and reinforce Milkman’s argument. Immigration is argued to ‘reflect . . . and intensify . . . the disruptive effects of capitalist development’ (p. 33). While immigration was not the initial cause of the degrading/refusal of jobs, can it then be argued to have allowed those jobs to remain unattractive to the US born? The answer can perhaps be found in the second grey area. Migrants are described as ‘pliable’ but also comparatively pro-trade union. Efforts to upgrade ‘brown-collar’ migrant jobs have been unsuccessful over all, not because migrants are unwilling to join unions and worker centres but because of employer intransigence and labour law impediments. It appears, then, that it is not immigration that maintains the bad jobs, but American employers in these sectors and existing regulations.