The Evaluation of Immigrants' Credentials: The Roles of Accreditation, Immigrant Race, and Evaluator Biases

Bennett-AbuAyyash Caroline, Joerg Dietz, Victoria M. Esses and Chetan Joshi

CLSSRN working papers from Vancouver School of Economics

Abstract: Theories of subtle prejudice imply that personnel decision makers might inadvertently discriminate against immigrant employees, in particular immigrant employees form racial minority groups. The argument is that the ambiguities that are associated with immigrant status (e.g., quality of foreign credentials) release latent biases against minorities. Hence, upon removal of these ambiguities (e.g., recognition of foreign credentials as equivalent to local credentials), discrimination against immigrant employees from minority groups should no longer occur. Experimental research largely confirmed these arguments, showing that participants evaluated the credentials of black immigrant employees less favorably only when the participants harbored latent racial biases and the foreign credentials of the applicants had not been accredited. The results suggest the importance of the official recognition of foreign credentials for the fair treatment of immigrant employees.

Keywords: Labour Discrimination; Immigrants; Racial Minorities; Prejudice; Credential Recognition; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2009-03-15, Revised 2009-03-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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