Search

This research explores the lived experiences and life choices of voluntarily childfree women in the United States. The purpose of this study is to investigate why women choose voluntary childlessness as well as to examine how they come to make a childfree decision. Drawing on indepth, semi-structured interviews with voluntarily childfree women, this paper discusses the selfreported reasons women decide not to bear children. Although this is a working paper in the early stages of data inquiry, preliminary analyses suggest that one of the ways voluntarily childfree women account for their childlessness is by the means of trauma narratives. As the women discuss the experience of traumas throughout their life course, they underscore conceivable reproductive risks and uncertainties--physical, social, and psychological ones. Moreover, they describe beliefs of untenable sacrifice and loss of self with regard to having children. The childfree women's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors emphasize how childbearing and childrearing affect personal well-being. Their reproductive decision-making processes are related to a variety of past and ongoing social, cultural, and psychological experiences, all of which inform the women's resistance to circumstances that accompany the possibility of, for example, dependency, loss, instability, or unpredictability. Grounded in a social psychological and social constructionist framework, I argue that the childfree women talk about, negotiate, and justify contested identities to self and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent institutional innovations aimed at improving workplace conditions among the paid in-home care workforce. The ranks of care workers who serve the elderly, young children, and people with disabilities are rapidly expanding, and civil society and government actors are adopting new strategies to ensure that these workers receive the pay and treatment guaranteed to them by law. In recent years, worker organizations and labor unions have won new policies, such as Domestic Workers' Bills of Rights, yet a disconnect persists between rights on paper and labor conditions in household workplaces. This paper explores one initiative that seeks to mend that disconnect: the creation of a local government agency in New York City charged with promoting rights enforcement among paid care workers. Through interviews with staff of worker organizations and government offices, I analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this institutional innovation. Preliminary findings suggest that this model offers promising but limited tools for defending workers' rights in home-based care. Some limitations may be overcome by further reforms, but others are more formidable, such as the dilemma of regulating individual households who directly hire care workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of female demining teams in simultaneously creating gender equality and environmental justice. By focusing on literature on the gendered body by Butler and Foucault, this study analyzes how women deminers utilize their bodies to shift gender norms in regions where traditional gender expectations are important. This paper also relies on Bourdieu's concepts of social and cultural capital to better understand the material changes that occur on the ground for women deminers. Using the HALO Trust as a case study with supporting data from an interview with a former employee, I analyze the organization's structure and mission to include women in the workforce. Relying on representative, capacities, and cultural forms of justice and their frameworks, this paper explores how demining efforts that include women, like those of HALO's, can be considered feminist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study expands on sociological concepts of transborder ties through a case study of Armenian diaspora members in the United States and Canada. Building on migration scholars who note that ties to the homeland do not dissolve after an individual migrates, this paper asks the questions of if and how transborder activism can promote feelings of belongingness amongst several generations of immigrants and explores how to qualitatively measure the effectiveness of activism done by nonlocal individuals. This paper draws on virtual ethnographic interviews that were conducted in the span of the 20182019 academic year with Armenians in the diaspora. The respondents of this study hold membership ties to diaspora youth organizations, such as the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF), and others are participants of Birthright Armenia, creating a diverse sample of Armenians who can speak to the experience of being in the homeland. This study is particularly important as it seeks to better understand how the Armenian 2018 Velvet Revolution was successful in being peaceful. By relying on literature that focuses on the role of globalization and technology, the responses in this study help to explain the impact of social media's role in influencing international social movement participation. This paper intersects concepts of social theory, politics, anthropology, and technology to add to current immigration dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although more women enter formerly maledominated fields, they remain underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This paper examines how adolescent's social environment, defined as friends in class and other (nonfriend) classmates, influence genderspecific STEM choices. We study if boys and girls are influenced differently by the math achievement of the environment and by the gender normative ideas of their environment. We used three waves (N = 726) from the CILS project, which surveyed adolescents in secondary education in the Netherlands at age 15 (2011/2012) and after secondary education at age 1718 (2014 & 2015). Using multinominallogistic regression analyses, results show that the likelihood of choosing STEM fields over nonSTEM fields increases when friends in class are better in mathematics, but decreases when friends in class have a higher comparative advantage in mathematics (are better in mathematics compared to languages). A higher math achievement of nonfriend classmates decreases the likelihood of choosing biology over nonSTEM fields, but their higher comparative advantage in mathematics increases the likelihood of choosing biology. We conclude that both the average math achievement and the comparative advantage in mathematics of students' environment matter for STEM choices, but that the environment's achievement does not explain gender differences in STEM fields. Moreover, friends and nonfriend classmates are different aspects of students' social environment as they influence students' STEM choices differently. Lastly, a more traditional gender normative environment impedes girls from entering STEM fields, suggesting that gender stereotypes of STEM fields as masculine are influential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing primarily on in-depth-interviews with 1.5-generation Brazilian immigrants who migrated to Massachusetts during the 1980s and 90s, this paper examines how race, class, and (il)legality shapes their post-schooling transitions and work experiences. While some scholars argue that illegality can become a master status during adulthood, I analyze how situational whiteness, middle class roots, and (il)legality work together to shape 1.5-generation Brazilians' post-schooling lives in important ways. I find that their positions of power in race and class hierarchies gives them access to important financial resources and networks that can help them overcome barriers to mobility due to illegality. Their networks and financial resources can also help them avoid downward trajectories when they face challenging life events, such as teen pregnancy, dropping out of high school, or deportation. Furthermore, although few 1.5- generation Brazilians identify as white, many can pass as white, at least in certain situations, leading them to report that their everyday interactions in white spaces, including work contexts, are easier for them than for their darker-skinned peers. Finally, many 1.5-generation Brazilians, who were only able to migrate on tourist visas and overstay because of their middle class roots, have been able to adjust their status to become lawful permanent residents and citizens - opening up important education and work opportunities for them in adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the banknotes the Cuban postrevolutionary government canceled, and overall the 1961 currency reform, arguing they were conceived to give shape to a revolutionary, fidelista figured world of power that extended and legitimized Castro's rule. The author first analyzes the Cuban currency reform, considering its financial, political, and symbolic impacts, further discussing in detail the visuality of each of the banknotes in Series 1961. She finally concludes that from the conception of the reform to the design of the notes were strategies of logistics that, as Chandra Mukerji argues, helped to define a new, revolutionary social world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]