The volume begins with a section on “Migration: From a global overview to national cases.” Korzeniewicz and Albert provide the global perspective, describing a deeply unequal global economy in which where one is born powerfully structures one’s economic opportunities. They forcefully argue that this economic inequality is the mainspring driving global migration, and that in fact migration represents the most important avenue of upward economic mobility available to large numbers of residents in low and middle income countries. Akinwale takes a closerlook at one particular set of flows, from Africa to the United Kingdom. He places this migration in the context of a series of diasporas from Africa including the highly destructive forced diaspora of the Transatlantic slave trade), and then shifts the focus to Britain to examine the mixed experiences of African migrants in their new countries. Clément presents a rather different case: the city-state of Luxembourg, which is so small that much labour literally commutes into the country, which has occasioned a unique set of institutional structures built around daily migration. Klein, Krey and Ternès, and Rimmer and Underhill, finally, analyze particular employment areas within particular companies. Klein (looking at physicians in Germany, at the high end of the occupational spectrum) and Underhill and Rimmer (examining agricultural workers in Australia at the low end) find disturbing patterns of marginalization and exclusion. But Krey and Ternès argue that the startup culture of new digital enterprises in Germany is actually quite hospitable to skilled migrants. The second section, “Workforce diversity: New looks at an old topic,” hightlights new perspectives on workforce diversity. There is no doubt that in the future, current racial and ethnic minority groups will constitute the majority of the population and workforce in many countries. However, workplaces are not yet prepared to deal with this change. In this respect, the paper by Pilati and Sperotti presents the case of Italy by focusing on the contract catering market, which is already experiencing relevant levels of ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity in the composition of its workforce. Sadly, only rarely do companies include diversity among their core values and action plans. In this respect, focusing on the U.S. context, Hatcher’s paper examines hostile work environment cases and workplace banter. Minority groups in the workplace, like immigrant and native-born racial and ethnic workers, are more likely to experience adverse treatment from supervisors and co-workers. Research has shown that subtler forms of harassment on the job pose significant obstacles to social inclusion for minority groups. One solution to these shortcomings might be to assign central, managerial responsibility for diversity to individual diversity managers, teams of managers operating in diversity task forces or councils, and to affirmative action plans and officers, an aspect highlighted by Dobbin and Kalev’s work. In this sense, quantitative evidence shows that diversity managers and task forces have positive effects on managerial diversity at company level and that affirmative action plans have weaker effects. Smith’s paper provides another response. According to him, in order to change the approach to diversity, non-profit and public agencies will have to recruit, retain, and promote women and minorities, assigning them positions of leadership and decision-making authority. The third and longest section of the book, “Global migration meets workforce diversity,” includes papers where the two central phenomena bump up against each other. Chavez and Red Bird, Jubany and Davis, and Mattioli and Rinaldini all look closely at the role of membership organizations. Chavez and Red Bird delve into professions and the role of occupational licensure, finding strong evidence that licensing creates obstacles to entry of immigrants into particular job categories. The other two of these papers focus on trade unions. Davis and Jubany draw on indepth interviews with migrant workers, trade union officials, employers, and country experts in six countries, as well as a review of literature and policy in each country. They conclude that the key actors, business managers and trade union leaders, for the most part do not appreciate the growing importance of diversity management, though there are important advances and best practices in more isolated cases. Mattioli and Rinaldini zoom in on one Italian trade union, a metalworkers’ union that is grappling with insufficient integration and representation of migrants within their ranks, and identify key helpful and harmful processes with respect to the goal of migrant integration. 12 Introduction The remaining papers examine the dynamics of migrant incorporation and the impact of “otherness” in a variety of structures. Portes paints the broadest canvas, drawing on decades of research on the U.S. immigration experience to highlight, as he puts it, both the structural importance and the change potential of migration in societies. He analyzes key alternative paths for the central pairings in these processes: the sending and receiving countries, employers and native workers, migrants and the society receiving them. Zamora-Kapoor links economy with ideology, using case studies of Andalusia and Wallonia to argue that a shift from labour shortage and consequent migrant recruitment, to labour surplus underlies and structures particularly sharp anti-immigrant sentiments in these regions. The remaining pair of papers limits their attention to particular institutional domains. Zou parses how Australia’s temporary visa scheme creates “hyper-precarious” work relations for migrants, extending Rimmer and Underhill’s analysis. The Dutch vocational education classroom is the arena for Meerman and van Middelkoop’s research, which finds that most teachers lack clear conceptions of cultural diversity and how to manage it, and, not surprisingly, signals the important role of teachers who are bicultural themselves. This set of papers suggests a few of the ways that a dialogue between diversity researchers and migration researchers can deepen the understanding of both. It hopscotches across economics, sociology, political science, labor relations and legal studies, demonstrating that the value of this dialogue cuts across disciplines. The volume particularly underlines the challenges faced in host societies—exclusion to the point of “hyperprecarity,” anti-migrant attitudes, widespread organizational indifference to the importance of diversity management. But it also points the way to possible solutions, from exemplary corporate and public sector diversity management programs, to proactive trade union engagement with the incorporation of migrants, to legal reforms to mitigate exclusion and facilitate integration—and to the political choices that could move these solutions forward. We hope this step toward a broader understanding that encompasses both global migration and workforce diversity will help stimulate further research—as well as action to confront the challenges and diffuse solutions.

How Global Migration Changes the Workforce Diversity Equation / Pilati, Massimo; Hina, Sheikh; Francesca, Sperotti; Chris, Tilly. - STAMPA. - (2015), pp. 1-499.

How Global Migration Changes the Workforce Diversity Equation

PILATI, Massimo;
2015

Abstract

The volume begins with a section on “Migration: From a global overview to national cases.” Korzeniewicz and Albert provide the global perspective, describing a deeply unequal global economy in which where one is born powerfully structures one’s economic opportunities. They forcefully argue that this economic inequality is the mainspring driving global migration, and that in fact migration represents the most important avenue of upward economic mobility available to large numbers of residents in low and middle income countries. Akinwale takes a closerlook at one particular set of flows, from Africa to the United Kingdom. He places this migration in the context of a series of diasporas from Africa including the highly destructive forced diaspora of the Transatlantic slave trade), and then shifts the focus to Britain to examine the mixed experiences of African migrants in their new countries. Clément presents a rather different case: the city-state of Luxembourg, which is so small that much labour literally commutes into the country, which has occasioned a unique set of institutional structures built around daily migration. Klein, Krey and Ternès, and Rimmer and Underhill, finally, analyze particular employment areas within particular companies. Klein (looking at physicians in Germany, at the high end of the occupational spectrum) and Underhill and Rimmer (examining agricultural workers in Australia at the low end) find disturbing patterns of marginalization and exclusion. But Krey and Ternès argue that the startup culture of new digital enterprises in Germany is actually quite hospitable to skilled migrants. The second section, “Workforce diversity: New looks at an old topic,” hightlights new perspectives on workforce diversity. There is no doubt that in the future, current racial and ethnic minority groups will constitute the majority of the population and workforce in many countries. However, workplaces are not yet prepared to deal with this change. In this respect, the paper by Pilati and Sperotti presents the case of Italy by focusing on the contract catering market, which is already experiencing relevant levels of ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity in the composition of its workforce. Sadly, only rarely do companies include diversity among their core values and action plans. In this respect, focusing on the U.S. context, Hatcher’s paper examines hostile work environment cases and workplace banter. Minority groups in the workplace, like immigrant and native-born racial and ethnic workers, are more likely to experience adverse treatment from supervisors and co-workers. Research has shown that subtler forms of harassment on the job pose significant obstacles to social inclusion for minority groups. One solution to these shortcomings might be to assign central, managerial responsibility for diversity to individual diversity managers, teams of managers operating in diversity task forces or councils, and to affirmative action plans and officers, an aspect highlighted by Dobbin and Kalev’s work. In this sense, quantitative evidence shows that diversity managers and task forces have positive effects on managerial diversity at company level and that affirmative action plans have weaker effects. Smith’s paper provides another response. According to him, in order to change the approach to diversity, non-profit and public agencies will have to recruit, retain, and promote women and minorities, assigning them positions of leadership and decision-making authority. The third and longest section of the book, “Global migration meets workforce diversity,” includes papers where the two central phenomena bump up against each other. Chavez and Red Bird, Jubany and Davis, and Mattioli and Rinaldini all look closely at the role of membership organizations. Chavez and Red Bird delve into professions and the role of occupational licensure, finding strong evidence that licensing creates obstacles to entry of immigrants into particular job categories. The other two of these papers focus on trade unions. Davis and Jubany draw on indepth interviews with migrant workers, trade union officials, employers, and country experts in six countries, as well as a review of literature and policy in each country. They conclude that the key actors, business managers and trade union leaders, for the most part do not appreciate the growing importance of diversity management, though there are important advances and best practices in more isolated cases. Mattioli and Rinaldini zoom in on one Italian trade union, a metalworkers’ union that is grappling with insufficient integration and representation of migrants within their ranks, and identify key helpful and harmful processes with respect to the goal of migrant integration. 12 Introduction The remaining papers examine the dynamics of migrant incorporation and the impact of “otherness” in a variety of structures. Portes paints the broadest canvas, drawing on decades of research on the U.S. immigration experience to highlight, as he puts it, both the structural importance and the change potential of migration in societies. He analyzes key alternative paths for the central pairings in these processes: the sending and receiving countries, employers and native workers, migrants and the society receiving them. Zamora-Kapoor links economy with ideology, using case studies of Andalusia and Wallonia to argue that a shift from labour shortage and consequent migrant recruitment, to labour surplus underlies and structures particularly sharp anti-immigrant sentiments in these regions. The remaining pair of papers limits their attention to particular institutional domains. Zou parses how Australia’s temporary visa scheme creates “hyper-precarious” work relations for migrants, extending Rimmer and Underhill’s analysis. The Dutch vocational education classroom is the arena for Meerman and van Middelkoop’s research, which finds that most teachers lack clear conceptions of cultural diversity and how to manage it, and, not surprisingly, signals the important role of teachers who are bicultural themselves. This set of papers suggests a few of the ways that a dialogue between diversity researchers and migration researchers can deepen the understanding of both. It hopscotches across economics, sociology, political science, labor relations and legal studies, demonstrating that the value of this dialogue cuts across disciplines. The volume particularly underlines the challenges faced in host societies—exclusion to the point of “hyperprecarity,” anti-migrant attitudes, widespread organizational indifference to the importance of diversity management. But it also points the way to possible solutions, from exemplary corporate and public sector diversity management programs, to proactive trade union engagement with the incorporation of migrants, to legal reforms to mitigate exclusion and facilitate integration—and to the political choices that could move these solutions forward. We hope this step toward a broader understanding that encompasses both global migration and workforce diversity will help stimulate further research—as well as action to confront the challenges and diffuse solutions.
2015
1443874388
9781443874380
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
REGNO UNITO DI GRAN BRETAGNA
How Global Migration Changes the Workforce Diversity Equation / Pilati, Massimo; Hina, Sheikh; Francesca, Sperotti; Chris, Tilly. - STAMPA. - (2015), pp. 1-499.
Pilati, Massimo; Hina, Sheikh; Francesca, Sperotti; Chris, Tilly
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