Multi-Level Triggers of Antiwoke Behaviour: Immigrant Marginalization in the Workplace

Abstract

This study examines how exclusionary diversity climates in antiwoke organizations foster hostility toward immigrant talent and lead to their underemployment and marginalization. Drawing on an integrative framework of institutional theory and social cognitive theory, we investigate how macro-level sociopolitical forces and mesolevel factors trigger and reinforce such antiwoke dynamics. Our qualitative study finds that moral panic; broader anti-immigrant signals in the sociopolitical landscape, such as ethnocentric and nationalist ideologies and regulatory shortcomings, are interpreted by organizations into HR practices and narratives. This organisational translation results in biased hiring and onboarding practices, pressures for cultural conformity, moral panic about cultural contamination, doubts about immigrants' professional legitimacy and informal boundary policing that reinforce insider–outsider divides. Consequently, we show how an antiwoke stance hampers the effective integration of immigrant employees. We argue that without confronting anti-EDI ideologies and implementing genuine inclusive practices at both institutional and organisational levels, firms will continue to underutilize skilled immigrants, worsening talent waste and skill shortages, which harms both organizations and countries.