title: Relational skill assets and anti-immigrant sentiments.
abstract: This study introduces the role of relational skill assets in accounting for attitudes toward immigrants: relational skill assets. Drawing upon stratification researchers' notion of "non-cognitive skills," we build a theoretical framework highlighting the role of occupational skill requirements in explaining anti-immigrant sentiment. Then, utilizing two occupation-specific measures, interpersonal skill requirement and instrumental skill requirement, we construct an explanatory factor, relational skill specificity. We test its effect on anti-immigrant attitudes as well as on the concentration of foreign-born workers in occupations, using the 2004 national identity module of General Social Survey. The findings confirm our argument that workers with a higher possession of interpersonal skill assets relative to instrumental skill assets are exposed to less intense competitions with immigrants, and are therefore less likely to express anti-immigrant sentiments. Our findings suggest that occupational-level relational skill assets based on sociocultural differences play an important role in shaping native workers' attitudes' toward immigrants.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, United States. Electronic address: naeyun@uchicago.edu.
authors.forename: Naeyun
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, United States. Electronic address: chslee@uchicago.edu.
authors.forename: Cheol-Sung
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D003163:Competitive Behavior; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants; D004651:Employment; D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D009790:Occupations; D063505:Racism; D066107:Social Skills; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014937:Work; D065806:Xenophobia
keywords: Anti-immigrant attitudes; Anti-immigrant sentiment; Occupational skills; Relational skills