New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration

6. The Origins of Employer Demand for Immigrants in a New Destination: The Salience of Soft Skills in a Volatile Economy

124 Chapter 6 The Origins of Employer Demand for Immigrants in a New Destination: The Salience of Soft Skills in a Volatile Economy Katharine M. Donato and Carl L. Bankston, III Well, it’s attitudes and skills; it’s a combination of both . . . but probably definitely attitude. They come out here and it’s wide open from when they start till the time they stop. —Louisiana oil industry employer Recent studies indicate a new geographic dispersion of immigrants to states such as Georgia, Minnesota, and North Carolina; to cities that include Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, and Nashville; and to smaller towns and villages throughout the southern and western regions of the United States (Kandel and Parrado 2005; Zúñiga and Hernández-León 2005; Saenz et al. 2004; Singer 2004; Bankston 2003; Durand, Massey, and Charvet 2000; Engstrom 2001; Hernández-León and Zúñiga 2000; Grey 1999; Stull, Broadway, and Erickson 1992). What accounts for the initiation of immigration to these new destination areas? This is a key research question. Studies suggest that the emergence of immigration to new areas of destination is related to at least three factors: labor-market opportunities, particularly in food processing and other industries generating unskilled and semiskilled employment; higher wages than in origin communities or in large urban centers where migrants may have settled in the past; and market failures in sending nations that push persons to migrate as part of a strategy to avert risk. Although these characteristics reflect the major theoretical paradigms advanced to explain international migration (Massey et al.  1994), together they fail to deal with an important dimension: the perceptions and actions of employers. Because these models view migratory decisions as rational and linked to labor demand, wages, and risk, they do not recognize the extent to which employers seek out and hire workers on the basis of perceptions of quality. The objective of this paper is to understand why, how, and when American employers in one new destination area turned to immigrants rather than natives to satisfy their labor needs. We draw on a rich set of data that includes interviews with approximately 140 employers, labor leaders, and immigrants as well as public opinion surveys in the surrounding communities. We interviewed employers in four new destination communities in southern Louisiana, an area where deep-sea offshore drilling has rapidly increased labor demand since the late 1980s. Louisiana had not been a common destination area for immigrants in the past, but many Spanish-speaking migrants began working in ship and fabrication yards in port cities during the mid-1990s (Donato, Bankston, and Robinson 2001; Donato, Stainback, and Bankston 2005). Our findings suggest that the volatility in labor markets during the 1980s created a new demand for immigrant labor in southern Louisiana. By the late 1990s, employers sought immigrants—especially those from Mexico. They believed immigrants were “willing subordinates” because they evaluated their treatment by American employers relative to how they would be treated in Mexican-origin communities (Waldinger and Lichter 2003, 40). Immigrants’ dual frame of reference made them an attractive labor supply for onshore manufacturing employers in the oil industry, where they preferred the “soft skills” of immigrants, such as motivation to work and positive interaction with others (Kirschenman and Neckerman 1991). “Soft” skills have been defined as “abilities and traits that pertain to personality, attitude, and behavior” (Moss and Tilly 2001, 44). Consistent with prior studies documenting how employer preferences are associated with race and ethnicity, this study illustrates how the salience of subjective opinions about immigrants in the highly volatile oil industry generated a demand for immigrant labor in southern Louisiana. EMPLOYERS AND THE INDUSTRIAL SECTOR We begin by describing employers and the industrial sector they represent , focusing on issues related to labor supply and demand at the time of our interviews. To place their reports in a larger context, we also present data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on changes in the rate of unemployment and the size of the local labor force. Wherever possible, The Origins of Employer Demand for Immigrants 125 126 New Faces in New Places we highlight regional differences and compare trends and patterns in our four study areas to the state of Louisiana and the nation as a whole. In addition, we augment the interpretation of these data with the employers’ own words. All the workplaces we visited—Houma, Morgan City, New Iberia...