Publications / Other reports / 2006 / 2006:010 Are New Work Practices and New Technologies Biased against Immigrant Workers?
Are New Work Practices and New Technologies Biased against Immigrant Workers?
IZA - Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit: Bonn (2006)
New technologies and new work practices have been introduced and implemented in most industrialised countries during the last two decades. These practices require interpersonal communication to a larger extent compared to the traditional assembly line types of production. We analyse whether these developments – by increasing the importance of communication and informal human capital – have had a negative effect on employment opportunities of immigrants. The results show that firms that use PCs intensively and firms that give their employees broad autonomy employ fewer non-Western immigrants who have not been raised in Norway. The negative relationships are especially strong for low-skilled non-Western immigrants.