Trabajo Peligroso: Occupational Segregation Among Latino Workers and the Cycle of Precarious Work

In the United States, Latino workers are overrepresented in precarious and high-risk occupations, contributing to disparities in their long-term health and well-being and creating a cycle wherein workers experience further precarity and strain. However, although the cyclical relationship between precarity and health and well-being has been established by existing work, the underlying mechanisms that funnel marginalized workers into this cycle are not well understood. To address this gap, we introduce a theoretical framework—the Cycle of Precarious Work—that integrates psychological and sociological perspectives to explain how occupational segregation emerges and persists as a driver of this cycle. Using the Latino experience as an example, we conducted an integrative literature review and identified 124 relevant studies to develop our framework. Our review revealed that (a) the bias against Latino workers is associated with occupational segregation in labor markets; (b) occupational segregation entails more Latino workers being employed in precarious work; (c) Latino workers with intersecting identities (e.g., gender or immigration status) are more vulnerable to precarious employment; (d) precarious work has serious short- and long-term health effects; and (e) these adverse health outcomes in turn exacerbate workers’ precarity and strain, fueling a self-reinforcing cycle. Taken together, our framework elucidates how structural inequalities and biased perceptions push stigmatized workers into precarious employment from which they struggle to escape. Our work is the first to integrate underlying psychological and sociological mechanisms that cause occupational segregation and to offer individual and contextual factors that may exacerbate or buffer these relationships.