RESEARCH ARTICLE
The impact of Secure Communities on the labor market outcomes of immigrant women
Cynthia Bansak, Sarah Pearlman,
Chad Sparber,
Corresponding Author
Sarah Pearlman
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA
Correspondence
Sarah Pearlman, Vassar College, 124 Raymond Avenue, Box 497, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604.
Email: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorCynthia Bansak, Sarah Pearlman,
Chad Sparber,
Corresponding Author
Sarah Pearlman
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA
Correspondence
Sarah Pearlman, Vassar College, 124 Raymond Avenue, Box 497, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604.
Email: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
The United States deported nearly 400,000 unauthorized immigrants under the Secure Communities (SC) interior immigration enforcement program between 2008 and 2014. This paper uses variation in the intensity of deportations across immigrants’ country of origin and city of residence to assess the labor market consequences of SC on foreign-born women. We find no effect on the total number of employed immigrant women, but both annual wages and the number of hours worked fell. Moreover, SC induced a shift toward occupations with lower average pay and education requirements, higher exposure to hazards, and less contact with others. This is consistent with a chilling effect in labor markets such that some foreign-born women were willing to sacrifice better pay and working environments for the ability to avoid detection.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The do files to replicate all figures and tables in the paper and the associated data files are available via TRAC, under the following label: tracfellows/Pearlman/JPAM2024. The TRAC data are not publicly available, and are only accessible to TRAC members. The data from the American Community Survey are available via IPUMS. Restrictions apply to the availability of Transactional Records Data Clearinghouse (TRAC) data, which were used under license for this study. Interested parties can apply to TRAC for access at https://trac.syr.edu/. Please contact Sarah Pearlman ([email protected]) for any questions about the data and do files.
Supporting Information
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Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
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