This study compares the occupational profiles of six immigrant groups
in the Los Angeles economy to expose details of the relationship between
gender, nativity, time of arrival, and labor market segmentation.
We study the occupational division of labor among the foreign-born from
Mexico, El Salvador, the Philippines, Guatemala, Korea, and China and find
that gender plays a dominant role relative to ethnicity in the process
of labor market segmentation. We also discover that newly arrived immigrant
men are more likely to enter male-dominated occupations than newly arrived
women are likely to concentrate in female-dominated occupations. This tendency,
however, varies in strength by nativity. Nativity and time of arrival also
affect the anatomy of occupational specialization, but, again, this effect
is not consistent across groups. The finding of variability in the relative
strength of gender and ethnicity in the determination of occupational profiles
across a broad sample of immigrant groups directs future researchers to
consider how ethnic resources are gendered in different ways by nativity.