LAUSR

Almost three decades ago, Acker (1990) claimed that organizations are structured around a normative ideal worker: a man “whose life centers on his fulltime, life-long job, while his wife or another woman takes care of his personal needs and his children” (p. 149). A number of scholars have built upon her work, suggesting that normative “professional” workers are also imagined as White (Nkomo, 1992), able-bodied (Mik-Meyer, 2016), and heterosexual (Rumens & Kerfoot, 2009). In this essay, I explore the abstract worker in relation to immigration status, a form of difference that has received little attention in organizational research (for exceptions, see Shenoy-Packer, 2015; Shenoy-Packer & Gabor, 2015). By focusing on the specific case of foreign1 scholars in U.S. academia, I show how the normative ideal worker is also a citizen or legal permanent resident who does not require an employersponsored visa. As a result, when foreign scholars in the United States navigate the academic job market, they must also negotiate the closet as it relates to their immigration status. Immigration status is a unique form of difference because individuals who require work visas must disclose this information once they are offered a job. Prior to receiving an offer, well-grounded fears of discrimination may lead foreign scholars to closet their immigration status during the job search. These fears of discrimination can stem from the lack of any type of legal protection for this category of workers. Fears of discrimination can also arise from the