This article addresses the controversial topic of public resistance to immigration, focusing on the role that occupations play and how they can shape cultural responses against immigrants. In particular, the study focuses on occupation-specific skills (OSS), which are assets whose returns depend on the occupational labor market context. When occupational unemployment rates
(OUR) are low, OSS protect against labor market competition, but their effectiveness decreases when unemployment increases. As a result, occupations with high OSS, such as professionals and managers, are particularly affected when the occupational labor market deteriorates. The paper claims that this deterioration in labor market prospects leads to a decline in the perception of social status, which in turn results in a cultural reaction against immigration. The paper fills the gap in the literature on why highly skilled workers react culturally against outgroups by establishing a link between occupations and the recent cultural backlash against immigration. Results from the European Social Survey show that there is a positive association between OUR and cultural concerns about immigration and that this association is moderated by OSS. The results are confirmed by analyzing within individual-occupation changes in OUR using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. To test whether the perceived decline in social status is indeed a plausible mechanism, I use data from the
International Social Survey Programme. I show that individuals facing higher OUR tend to perceive lower social status, and that this relationship is stronger the higher the amount of OSS.