We take great pride in our notion of America as a meritocratic country. Our ideology says that if an individual has the skills and the drive to perform successful and meaningful work, they will be rewarded in proportion to their competency and motivation. For many immigrants, the notion that America justly distributes rewards is why they came here in the first place. This ideal, however, is not completely true to the immigrant experience: 31.4% of first-generation immigrants are underemployed, relative to 18.2% of second-generation immigrants (Slack). That is to say, even when education level and job readiness are held equal, some part of the immigrant experience prevents almost a third of immigrants from attaining the jobs and economic rewards that their skills entitle them to. There are a number of factors that are responsible for this. For instance, while immigrants often have very expansive and tight-knit social networks with other immigrants, these communities often become so tight-knit as to exclude economically productive ties with other immigrant groups or native-born people (Hagan). Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that education and training received abroad is universally less valued than preparations obtained domestically, even when immigrants come from developed nations: employers perceive barriers to applying “foreign-acquired” skills to domestic workplaces. This gap between native-born workers and foreign-born workers is durable across years spent in the workforce. Absent education in a domestic institution, foreign-educated workers are consistently left behind (Friedberg). What unites these two explanations is the degree to which they rely on communication and the impressions produced by immigrants.

And so, I am keenly interested in the degree to which accent might affect these factors: I can imagine that accent might cause immigrants to believe (perhaps rightfully so) that speech and interaction with native citizens activates stereotyping or perhaps even hostility, which could act to reinforce the tendency to form tight-knit immigrant communities and to seek jobs only within these social networks. Furthermore, the fact that years of workplace experience do not diminish the gap in pay between workers of similar education and training suggests that some factor other than “skill compatibility” is at work: it is not just that the training that immigrants received before moving to their new home is not perfectly compatible with the work expected of them, because years of workplace experience should act to rectify outstanding differences in a way that is not reflected by the data. It is also telling that education in the host country effectively reduces this discrepancy: perhaps in addition to “skill alignment,” immigrants successfully pick up cultural capital that allows them to more successfully navigate the economic landscape, which may, for instance, help reduce the perceived “foreignness” of the worker. These ideas, of course, interact with the simpler explanation that employers are simply prejudiced against people with foreign accents. Studies show that having a regional accent that differs from the employer’s negatively impacts evaluations of job suitability (Dianne), and that the presence of an accent empowers individuals who are identified as being prejudiced to leave a more negative evaluation of prospective employees (de Souza). Therefore, it seems important to investigate the relationship between these competing explanations: to what degree is the immigrant job search impacted by having an accent, and what factors modulate the degree to which having an accent impacts the impression you leave on employers?

I propose a series of experiments to test these hypotheses. I would design resumes imitating the profile of an immigrant educated in, for instance, engineering. I would have a person capable of adopting the accent of such an immigrant applicant phone in to a number of job openings requesting an interview, both with and without the accent, saying precisely the same words. The purpose of this experiment would be to “challenge” a native accent with foreign qualifications, in order to see if accent can overwhelm the well-documented application weakness of being educated in a foreign country. After this, I would perform another trial where I modify the call’s script and resume to contain mentions of items that indicate cultural assimilation in the host country: perhaps many years spent living in the country listed on the resume. Finally, I would include a trial where I do the same thing, but with items that indicate workplace assimilation instead: something like attending a professional conference in the host country. As a control, I would repeat this trial with resumes indicating education in a university in the country where the study takes place. The overall purpose of these experiments is to determine how these metrics of assimilation, either economic or cultural, modulate the ways in which accent impacts perceived suitability for upper middle class jobs.

At the end of the day, the correct interpretation probably lies somewhere between the material (difficulty hearing about new jobs, having slightly different skill sets) and cultural (employers being prejudiced against foreigners) explanations for why immigrants have a much harder time finding suitable employment than their peers. Determining where on this continuum the truth lies is important for coming up with strategies, policies, and mindsets that give immigrants a fair shake in their new homes. However, the degree of cultural/economic assimilation is just one variable that can modulate how harshly foreign accents are judged in the workplace. It is very likely that the impact of accent is modulated depending on the prestige and type of work that is being applied for–perhaps employers requiring advanced degrees are more likely to rely on prior accomplishments than gut feeling. It is also possible that employers fall back on prejudices when the amount of information they have is insufficient, so perhaps the detail included in the resume affects the degree to which prejudicial attitudes are activated. Regardless, it is important to start somewhere, and the existing literature suggests that assimilation into the host culture makes job acquisition more easy. Future work could build off of the findings of this study, and explore other factors that might impact the immigrant experience as far as language prejudice is concerned, using the methods drafted by this initial study.

 

Works Cited

Cukor-Avila, P. (2000). Regional accent discrimination in the hiring process: A language attitude study. Thesis, University of North Texas.

Friedberg, Rachel M. (2000). You Can’t Take it with You? Immigrant Assimilation and the Portability of Human Capital. Journal of Labor Economics. Volume 18, Number 2.

Hagan, Jacqueline M. (1998). Social Networks, Gender, and Immigrant Incorporation: Resources and Constraints.American Sociological Review. Volume 63, Number 1.

Luana Elayne Cunha de Souza et al (2016). The legitimizing role of accent on discrimination against immigrants. European Journal of Social Psychology. Volume 46, Issue 5.

Slack, Tim., Jensen, Leif (2007). Underemployment across immigrant generations. Social Science Research. Volume 36, Issue 4.