MIGRANTS AND THE BARGAINING PROCESS IN THE LABOR MARKET: APPLICATION OF ULTIMATUM GAME

Abstract

International migration movements continue to increase due to reasons such as income differences between countries, wars and turmoil, and political instability. Due to the internal turmoils in nations like Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Turkey is one of the nations that receive the most immigrants. Immigrants are generally employed as cheap labor in the labor market of their country of origin. On the other hand, they may be subjected to negative behaviours by the people of the host country due to cultural differences. The aim of this study is to investigate the tendency to offer low wages to immigrants in Turkey. The existence of the perception that immigrants are willing to work for low wages in Turkey and negative attitudes towards immigrants in the labor market were investigated with the ultimatum game application on Kastamonu University Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences students. As a result of the research, no statistically significant difference was found between the wage offer given to the worker candidate whose nationality is unknown and the wage offer given to the worker candidate who is known to be an immigrant. In addition, it was observed that the participants exhibited altruistic behaviors, and those who received offers (responders) with foreign nationality accepted the offers at a higher rate.