The paper aims at examining an article about the peculiarities of immigrant discrimination in the workplace written by Krings, Johnston, Binggeli, and Maggiori in 2014. The authors introduce two hypotheses about immigrants, identify their roles in local labor markets, and prove that certain cultural, educational, and personal issues are crucial in regards to the question of immigrant groups stereotyping.
It has been already known, and the article reminds the reader again, that immigrant employees may face a number of problems as well as enjoy their benefits when they try to find good jobs.
The article under analysis shows that diversity in organizations is a question for discussions nowadays, and people from different parts of the world try to offer their own suggestions and ideas on how to solve this question, improve working conditions for people with different backgrounds, and prove that immigrant group stereotyping has never to be omitted as it plays an important role for society.
After giving some brief facts about the amount of immigrants in workplaces and identifying Switzerland workers as the main subjects of the research, the authors introduce two main hypotheses using one powerful basis – selective incivility – as subtle interpersonal discrimination.
First, it is stated that immigrants experience workplace incivility more than locals; and second, it is mentioned that French and German immigrants demonstrate the highest rates of workplace incivility in comparison to other immigrant groups (Krings, Johnston, Binggeli, & Maggiori, 2014). To prove the correctness of the chosen hypotheses, Krings et al. share a part of the results of their longitudinal project that support the second hypothesis and do not deny the possibility of the first hypothesis.
The examples from different spheres of life and personal experience prove that people suffer from immigrant group diversity a lot. Workforce integration depends how immigrants are able to meet the demands of the chosen society: language barriers, religious expectations, personal needs, etc. (Xiao, Willis, & Jeffers, 2014). On the one hand, it is clear why immigrants may face challenges while searching work and need additional help.
On the other hand, it seems to be wrong to provide foreigners with work and appropriate salaries at the expense of native workers. This is the claim that has to be mentioned: local workers should not suffer because of the support of foreign workers.
This is why it is hard to decide whether it is wrong or right that immigrants suffer from workplace incivility and whether it is necessary to solve this problem. The authors of the article do not focus on solving the problem but prove that it does exist and explain what factors may influence the chosen diversity.
The results of the research introduced in the article show that immigrants may experience more incivility than locals, still, not all immigrants as it is mentioned in the first hypothesis. At the same type, the partial support of this hypothesis provides the whole support of another hypothesis concerning French and German immigrants and their relation to incivility in comparison to the representatives of other nationalities.
It is possible to suggest that a geographic issue is also crucial for the immigrants-at-workplace issue: when neighbor countries share their workers, immigrant workers are usual for society, and the question of working challenges is not as vital for these immigrants as for the immigrants from the other countries. At the same time, the demand of foreign workers with new fresh ideas from far countries plays an important role as well.
Organizations want to have unique workers with a unique experience. This is why hostile work environment may become a problem for many workers, both immigrants and locals, and the main task is to think about appropriate working conditions in general and offer successful management neglecting the challenges of such processes like globalization or immigration (Canas & Sondak, 2014).
The article is also a powerful source of information on how it is necessary to define immigrant groups of workers and overcome the challenges of diversity at any cost. There are the cases when countries are in need of immigrant working force as the only possible chance to avoid shortages of skilled labor.
If immigrants are well-educated and demonstrate good intentions in regards to working places they can get, they have to be appreciated. Managers want to find good workers for their organizations, and they do not pay attention whether these workers are immigrants or not. However, for some companies, the question of immigration remains to be burning, and treatment to such workers varies.
In general, the article chosen introduces clear facts about immigrant group stereotyping and helps to realize that workers may face some problems at work places being immigrants or locals. Of course, the question of immigration does play a certain role in working processes, still, if companies focus on success, they use immigrants to achieve better results. Though it is not always possible to find a good immigrant worker, this task may be achieved.
Worker discrimination may become a problem and a real challenge; still, it may be explained due to the necessity to appreciate and promote local workers and solved under the control of skilled managers and rational workers and used as a good change for changes and improvements.
References
Canas,K. & Sondak, H. (2014). Opportunities and challenges of workplace diversity: Theory, cases and exercises (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.
Krings, F., Johnston, C., Binggeli, S., & Maggiori, C. (2014). Selective incivility: Immigrant groups experience subtle workplace discrimination at different rates. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 20(4), 491-498. doi: 10.1037/a0035436.
Xiao, L., Willis, E., & Jeffers, L. (2014). Factors affecting the integration of immigrant nurses into the nursing workforce: A double hermeneutic study. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 51(4), 640-653. doi: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2013.08.005.