UC Berkeley

Racial capitalism structures the labor market and workplace conditions in ways that negatively influence the health of immigrant workers and workers of color. It does so by constructing and reproducing racial and consequently socioeconomic hierarchies through the racialization of workers. Racial capitalism is observed in the labor exploitation and violations experienced by racialized workers that contribute to health inequities. Wage theft is a prominent form of labor exploitation that has been found to be associated with poor health outcomes. Exposure to inequitable workplace practices—where conditions of exploitation and violation occur—is a function of public policies that create and reinforce conditions that structurally discriminate against vulnerable workers. This nascent area of research requires further exploration into how racial capitalism drives the policies and practices that influence worker health.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the ways policies and practices that are motivated by racial capitalism, influence the health of workers and whether health is disproportionately distributed across racialized workers. We do this through a series of empirical paper chapters that examine these relationships using nationally representative data and data on state-level wage theft policies. In chapter 2, we construct a wage theft measure and examine its association with self-rated health and number of sick days among low-wage immigrant workers and workers of color. In chapter 3, we develop a composite score of state-level wage theft policies and assess the relationship between both the policy score and distinct policy categories with self-rated health. In chapter 4, we test whether the relationships between both policy score and policy categories and self-rated health are modified by race/ethnicity and immigration status.

This research contributes to the literature by exploring and examining the effects of racial capitalism on health as observed through wage theft and state-level policies. While research on the health effects of wage theft have emerged more recently, this is an area of work that requires further scholarship. Future research should not only examine this further, but should explore other mechanisms of how racial capitalism undermines the health of people of color and immigrants. We hope that this research can add to the scholarly discourse that is needed to address the workplace policies and practices that not only have economic and financial implications for workers and their families, but also contribute to health inequities.