Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

A defining feature of the Latino population in U.S. labor markets in their concentration in a narrow set of occupations, characterized by instability, low wages, and limited opportunities for advancement. Recent empirical assessments indicate that Latino workers are the most occupationally segregated group in the country, particularly among Latina women (Alonso-Villar, Del Rio, and Gradin 2012). This occupational segregation translates not only into material disadvantage, but also has important consequences for the physical and mental health of workers and their family members.

The extent to which these dynamics of occupational segregation – and related impacts on social position, economic resources, and health – are reflected in the lives of Latinos and their families is highly stratified by legal status. With approximately half of Latino immigrants lacking authorization to work, illegality is both a pervasive and profound reality for the Latino community. A large body of work in the social sciences has detailed the impact that legal status has on economic and social well-being, finding, for instance, that unauthorized Latinos are less likely to finish high school, are compensated less for their labor, and not rewarded for investments in their own skill development (Bean et al. 2015; Hall et al. 2010, 2019; Gleeson and Gonzales 2012). Combined with the constant threat of deportation, this economic and social precariousness carries emotional tolls that undercut the health and well-being of undocumented Latinos (Suarez-Orozco et al. 2015; Yoshikawa 2011).

Given their vulnerable position in U.S. labor markets, unauthorized Latino immigrants are liable to be particularly prone to occupational segregation and its impacts. Indeed, popular narratives characterize unauthorized immigrants as concentrating in dangerous, dirty, or otherwise unappealing jobs, where they are able to escape detection and avoid scrutiny about their documentation status. Both qualitative and quantitative work supports these claims, with research finding that immigrants are overrepresented in jobs with high fatality rates and ones considered to have harmful routine practices (Hall and Greenman 2015; Orrenius and Zavodny 2012; Premji and Krause 2010). Yet little is known about how legal status shapes occupational segregation, characteristics of jobs, and exposure to harmful and precarious features of workers’ employment. Even less is known about how these dynamics contribute to the physical and mental health of unauthorized and authorized Latino migrants.

In this study, we use data from the Hispanic Community Health Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL) to assess differences in occupational quality, hazards, and precarity among Hispanics workers, by nativity and immigration status. These data are uniquely suited for this analysis as they include information for determining immigration status, contain information on occupations, occupational quality, and exposure to hazards, and covers an extensive set of measures related to physical and mental health. The HCHS data are also ideal as the sample includes large numbers of Hispanic workers with distinct profiles – e.g., in terms of national origin, gender, language ability, years in the US, and labor market – which allows for empirical assessments of how the relationships between legal status, occupational quality, and health are differentiated.