Immigrant workers’ responses to stigmatized work: Constructing dignity through moral reasoning

Abstract

In the past few decades, scholarship on immigrant workers has produced two contrasting images that remain theoretically unresolved. In the 1970s and 1980s, low-wage immigrant workers were viewed as target earners whose attachment to jobs in the US was seen as temporary. By contrast, recent scholarship has depicted immigrant workers as a potent social force whose quest for dignity and full societal membership is seen as having galvanized a moribund labour movement. This study draws from the lived experience of low-wage immigrant workers to examine how they relate to their socio-economic circumstances, and what, if anything, motivates their resistance to the status quo. Analysing interview data from immigrant workers in janitorial and nursing assistant occupations in the US, I delineate how workers construct dignity by reframing the meaning of work, transferring aspirations for social mobility to their children, and resisting stereotypes of immigrant workers to generate dignified collective identities. I conclude with a discussion that aims to shed light on the contrasting and contentious views of immigrant workers and their position in the American labour movement.