Tied migration and anticipatory discrimination against military spouses seeking work

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Military conflicts create challenges for enlistees and their families. One challenge facing military spouses is that of finding work and maintaining a career in the face of repeated moves and deployments. This project will reveal whether and the extent to which the public and employers view military spouse job seekers differently than their civilian peers, and if so, how frequent geographic mobility in the past, or assumptions about moves in the future, influence the perceptions of military spouses as job candidates. The project studies how stereotypes of military spouses as frequent movers and job changers may lead to anticipatory discrimination based on presumptions of future behavior when seeking work. Because military spouse employment problems may influence the retention decisions of their service member, this issue has implications for recruiting and retention of a high-quality military force. In doing so, this study offers evidence that may be useful in creating effective policy solutions for military families, as well as other dual income households. This study will use complementary experimental and qualitative methods, including survey vignette experiments with actual hiring agents and a series of employer interviews, to identify whether and to what extent hiring agents treat military spouses seeking employment differently than similar civilian peers, and why. The project develops and tests a theory of anticipatory discrimination by explicitly evaluating how past geographic mobility and future expectations of geographic stability influence evaluations of women job seekers, and whether past and future geographic stability accounts for any differential evaluations of military spouse job seekers. The survey experiment is complemented by interviews with actual hiring agents in four labor markets to understand their past experiences with military spouse employees, how they perceive them as applicants, and how hiring decisions are influenced by anticipated futures of these applicants. The proposed research enhances the study of military spouses and tied migrant labor market outcomes in several ways. First, the project provides explicit attitudinal and behavioral evidence of differential treatment of military spouses relative to civilian spouses. Second, the study broadens the research base on military spouse and tied migrant employment by locating employers as central influences on military spouse unemployment. Third, the proposed research also tests how military spouses and civilian tied migrants are evaluated across labor markets characterized by different levels of military presence. While the case under study centers on one type of worker, similar processes operate with other groups. The concept of anticipatory discrimination may offer new ways to conceive of legal protections for categories of workers based around presumed or actual future statuses.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.