Large-scale immigration has introduced new and salient dimensions of ethnic stratification in Europe’s affluent liberal democracies. Successfully incorporating disadvantaged, newly arrived immigrant minorities represents a critical societal challenge for the 21st century. Despite a vast literature on labor market inequalities between immigrants and natives, the majority of existing research relies exclusively on data about individual workers, yielding limited insights into the role of firms and workplace contexts. To date, no systematic effort has exploited linked employer–employee data to assess how organizational contexts shape economic assimilation across immigrant generations. ORGMIGRANT fills this gap by focusing on workplaces as key sites where contemporary processes of ethnic stratification and immigrant assimilation unfold at the micro level. From a policy perspective, understanding the specific organizational mechanisms behind workplace inequalities will facilitate targeted interventions to enhance the labor market incorporation of immigrant minorities.
The distinguishing feature of ORGMIGRANT is its organizational approach to ethnic stratification in the labor market, emphasizing how economic assimilation evolves across immigrant generations. The primary objective is to demonstrate how work organizations both shape and reflect evolving patterns of ethnic stratification from one generation to the next. An additional goal is to advance broader social-scientific theories of immigrant assimilation. These objectives are operationalized through three intermediary aims: (1) applying organizational theories to immigrant assimilation research; (2) methodological innovation through advanced analytical techniques for linked employer–employee data; and (3) generating policy-relevant knowledge on organizational sources of immigrant assimilation.
ORGMIGRANT investigates workplace segregation and explores how and why inequality and ethnic boundary salience between immigrant-background and native-majority workers vary by organizational context. Thus, we not only assess whether immigrant minorities are assimilating, but also extend existing theories by identifying specific organizational conditions under which assimilation is promoted or constrained. To achieve theoretical advancement, we conduct empirical studies of Norwegian workplaces combined with comparative analyses across several high-income countries (Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United States). Leveraging economy-wide linked employer–employee data and state-of-the-art statistical methods, our analyses precisely situate workers within their workplace contexts, enabling an in-depth understanding of immigrant–native labor market inequalities.
