Gendering Job Competition: Immigration and African American Employment in Chicago, 1990-2000

Abstract

This investigation of demographic changes between 1990 and 2000 within African American employment concentrations in Chicago finds that the effects of immigration on African American employment differ by gender. Black women increasingly shared their niche industries with immigrant women without being displaced, a pattern of coexistence that indicates the primacy of gender in sorting women into employment. By contrast, similar patterns were absent between African American and immigrant men, and several niche industries reflected competition. Yet economic restructuring more significantly affected African American male and female employment than immigration. Among women, these same trends also affected immigrants. Both groups were adversely affected by the growth of low-wage employment in female-dominated, care-work jobs—their primary industries of overlap. These findings underscore the significance of gender in problematizing ethnic/racial divisions of labor and the need to consider economic consequences that cross these divisions as well as derive from them within urban economies.