The Occupational Share of Foreigners and Attitudes to Equal Opportunities

This paper examines the relationship between Swiss attitudes towards equal opportunities for foreigners and ethnic concentration at the occupational level. Using data from the Swiss Household Panel, ordered probit regressions with standard controls show that: (a) there is a negative association between the share of foreigners in one's occupation and positive attitudes to equal opportunities; (b) there is a positive association between the relative share of recently arrived foreigners and positives attitudes to equal opportunities. This suggests that workers are at the same time wary of competition with foreigners and welcome their contribution to overcome labour shortages. Controlling for occupational characteristics further establishes that the negative association in (a) is probably caused by sorting on job quality and is unrelated to labour market competition. Regarding the positive association in (b), the quality sorting explanation is partially supported, suggesting that the immigrant-native complementarity also plays a role. All results are robust to potential self-selection of Swiss workers with negative attitudes into occupations with few foreigners and also to the endogenous allocation of foreigners into particular segmented labour markets.