How Political Context Affects Immigrant Newcomers’ Social Undermining Dynamics and Well-Being at Work

Abstract

Although the successful labor market integration of immigrants can promote their prosperity and that of their organization, immigrant newcomers often face a difficult socialization process that can jeopardize their well-being. Considering the rising political polarization in many societies, as well as the dynamic nature of the newcomer socialization process, we develop a dynamic and multilevel model of immigrant employees’ socialization experiences over time, which is shaped by far-right voter support in the region where their organization is located. Building on and extending the relational demography literature, we argue that immigrants’ trajectories of social undermining—whether increasing or decreasing—are strongly influenced by levels of regional far-right support. Immigrants’ social undermining trajectories signal to them the feasibility of achieving a high-status identity at work, thereby impacting their well-being. We find support for our model in a unique dataset matching apprentices in Germany (tracked from day one of their apprenticeship over 13 weeks) with German election data. Specifically, we find that immigrants perceive increasing (decreasing) social undermining by their coworkers over time when employed in a region with higher (lower) far-right political support. Perceptions of increasing (decreasing) negative treatment, in turn, negatively (positively) affect employees’ emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction.