How immigrant job seekers’ acculturation influences exploitation opportunism in the United States: A conceptual framework

Global migration has contributed to an increasingly multicultural workforce, yet studies suggest that immigrants are exploited and face discrimination in the United States labor market. While prior research has examined the workplace experiences of immigrant employees, little is known about the sense-making process of immigrant job applicants as they navigate the hiring process. This article addresses this gap by introducing a conceptual framework explaining why and how immigrant job applicants are vulnerable to exploitation, with a focus on their mode of acculturation. The framework also incorporates individual differences in recruiters’ cross-cultural attitudes, such as other-group orientation and human values, as conditional factors that could influence employers’ motivation to exploit immigrant applicants. The article concludes with practical implications, including guiding immigrants to adopt acculturation strategies that signal intercultural adaptation and dispel misconceptions about their resource capital and encouraging recruiters to engage in ethical training that fosters intercultural sensitivity in cross-cultural hiring processes. These insights advance understanding of immigrant exploitation and contribute to the broader literature on cross-cultural selection.