Can you do Kung Fu and also act? New entrants’ status attainment in the creative industries

Abstract Despite the wealth of research on the antecedents of status, we know little about the mechanisms that affect ability of individuals in one market to attain status in another market. The issues of cross-market status transfer are especially salient in the creative industries that are characterized by intensive cross-country migration. We combine research on status and typecasting to explain the mechanisms causing some migrants to lose or gain status in a host country relative to other migrants. We find that low-status migrants gain status relative to high-status migrants. We also find that low-status generalist migrants gain status relative to high-status generalist migrants. We develop these insights through the analysis of an original dataset on the status attainment of mainland Chinese movie actors in the Hong Kong film industry.