How Political Context Affects Immigrants’ Social Contact Dynamics and Mental Health at Work

Abstract

International migration has been rising across the globe for decades, making the integration of immigrants into host societies a central challenge for many countries. Although the successful labor market integration of immigrants is considered a key boon to their economic independence and broader social integration, rising political polarization in many western societies with increasing far-right political support might put integration efforts at risk. Challenging core assumptions of intergroup contact theory (Pettigrew, 1998), we propose that strong community support for far-right political parties affects how immigrants are treated by their coworkers when entering a new workplace, thus undermining the potential benefits of social contact between immigrants and natives. Specifically, we propose that immigrants perceive negative social contact with their direct colleagues that increases over time when employed by a company located in a region with high far-right political support. Being confronted with a growing perception of negative contact will then take its toll on employees’ mental health, assessed by their emotional exhaustion at a later time point. We test and find support for our theoretical model in a unique dataset matching 481 trainees in Germany (tracked from day one of their traineeships over a period of 13 weeks) with data from the 2021 German federal election.