New employment regimes in cities: The impact on immigrant workers

Abstract

The major cities of highly developed countries exhibit marked changes in job supplies and employment relations. It is frequently held that post‐industrial societies require plentiful supplies of highly educated workers and will hold no openings for the low skilled. It is this latter category of jobs that immigrants have tended to fill in recent decades. Empirical data on major cities in advanced economies negate this supposition, revealing that there is an ongoing demand for immigrant labour and a continuing stream of employment opportunities which do not require high educational levels and which pay low wages. The article examines whether this job supply is merely a residue, to some extent augmented by the supply of low wage workers themselves, or whether it is a feature of a reconfigured labour market in advanced urban economies, i.e. a systemic development.