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Racism and Labor Market Threat (Mis)Perceptions: An Original Survey Exploring Moroccan Attitudes about sub-Saharan Migrants
Abstract
In developed economies, like the United States, and also developing ones, like those of the Middle East and North Africa, scholarship has increasingly found that racism can influence labor relations. This has manifested in Morocco, where sub-Saharan and Arab migrants and refugees have entered the labor market. Using an original, nationally representative survey of 2700 respondents, the authors find that Moroccans worry about sub-Saharan migrants depressing their wages (66 percent) or taking their jobs (60 percent). Conversely, they expressed less concern about these threats from Arab migrants and refugees, with whom they share more ‘in-group’ attributes (e.g. ethnicity, language). The authors’ results complexify existing literature, some of which predicts that citizens should perceive greater potential labor market threats from ‘in-group’ migrants than ‘out-group’ ones. They argue that racist constructs inherited from Morocco’s history of racial stratification shape citizens’ diverging perceptions about the potential labor market threats posed by these two migrant groups.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Morocco
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries