Threats to Legitimacy in Local Employment Law Enforcement Regimes Among Immigrant and Racially Marginalized Small Business Owners

U.S. municipal labor enforcement agencies find they are often inundated with complaints from small, immigrant‐ or minority‐owned firms. This undermines these agencies' efforts to engage in strategic enforcement and raises equity concerns, threatening the legitimacy of the labor standards enforcement regime among some businesses. This paper draws on interviews with small business owners who participated in a pilot study that provided employment law‐compliant human resource services for small businesses in Minneapolis to address this issue. We contribute to the theories of employer non‐compliance by pointing to the issue of employer capacity and the ways that issues of capacity are shaped by historical legacies of racism and xenophobia.