How Global Migration Changes the Workforce Diversity Equation

The volume begins with a section on “Migration: From a global overview to national cases.” Korzeniewicz and Albert provide the global perspective, describing a deeply unequal global economy in which where one is born powerfully structures one’s economic opportunities. They forcefully argue that this economic inequality is the mainspring driving global migration, and that in fact migration represents the most important avenue of upward economic mobility available to large numbers of residents in low and middle income countries. Akinwale takes a closerlook at one particular set of flows, from Africa to the United Kingdom. He places this migration in the context of a series of diasporas from Africa including the highly destructive forced diaspora of the Transatlantic slave
trade), and then shifts the focus to Britain to examine the mixed experiences of African migrants in their new countries. Clément presents a
rather different case: the city-state of Luxembourg, which is so small that much labour literally commutes into the country, which has occasioned a
unique set of institutional structures built around daily migration. Klein, Krey and Ternès, and Rimmer and Underhill, finally, analyze particular
employment areas within particular companies. Klein (looking at physicians in Germany, at the high end of the occupational spectrum) and
Underhill and Rimmer (examining agricultural workers in Australia at the low end) find disturbing patterns of marginalization and exclusion. But
Krey and Ternès argue that the startup culture of new digital enterprises in Germany is actually quite hospitable to skilled migrants.
The second section, “Workforce diversity: New looks at an old topic,” hightlights new perspectives on workforce diversity. There is no doubt that
in the future, current racial and ethnic minority groups will constitute the majority of the population and workforce in many countries. However,
workplaces are not yet prepared to deal with this change. In this respect, the paper by Pilati and Sperotti presents the case of Italy by focusing on
the contract catering market, which is already experiencing relevant levels of ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity in the composition of its
workforce. Sadly, only rarely do companies include diversity among their core values and action plans. In this respect, focusing on the U.S. context,
Hatcher’s paper examines hostile work environment cases and workplace banter. Minority groups in the workplace, like immigrant and native-born
racial and ethnic workers, are more likely to experience adverse treatment from supervisors and co-workers. Research has shown that subtler forms
of harassment on the job pose significant obstacles to social inclusion for minority groups. One solution to these shortcomings might be to assign
central, managerial responsibility for diversity to individual diversity managers, teams of managers operating in diversity task forces or
councils, and to affirmative action plans and officers, an aspect highlighted by Dobbin and Kalev’s work. In this sense, quantitative
evidence shows that diversity managers and task forces have positive effects on managerial diversity at company level and that affirmative
action plans have weaker effects. Smith’s paper provides another response. According to him, in order to change the approach to diversity, non-profit
and public agencies will have to recruit, retain, and promote women and minorities, assigning them positions of leadership and decision-making
authority.
The third and longest section of the book, “Global migration meets
workforce diversity,” includes papers where the two central phenomena
bump up against each other. Chavez and Red Bird, Jubany and Davis, and
Mattioli and Rinald