Search

While previous research has focused on terrorist attacks and natives' attitudes towards immigration, we examine the effect of anti-refugee attacks on refugees' attitude towards the host country. We use survey data from the 33rd wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel as the fieldwork period overlapped with the infamous anti-refugee riots in Bautzen and as the survey includes a refugee sample. Making use of this natural experiment, we find significant and negative short-term effects of the riots on respondents' perception of Germany, as well as low geographic variation. Such natural experiments in the form of unexpected events during survey design offer social scientists the possibilities to identify causal effects from observational survey data as they split respondents into a control and treatment group. Given the vast amount of (cross-)national survey data, often including specific subsamples, our study demonstrates the great potential of natural experiments for sociological research on minority groups in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological studies of sustainable transformation have highlighted the relevance of 'unequal' and 'uneven' transformation dynamics. We argue that a practice-based approach provides far more insight into such unequal dynamics than currently recognized. We re-interpret the political concepts of agonism, antagonism and historic bloc that Gramsci used to analyse domination in order to theorize practice constellations and dynamics that are responsible for the perpetuation of unsustainable practices and the suppression of sustainable ones. Based on empirical findings, we also expand his vocabulary by introducing the concept of synergy. Using the example of urban cycling in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, we propose a Gramscian-inspired account of power and domination in practices as a way of understanding inequality in transformation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how the fragmentation of work time influences subjective time pressure, and how this relationship varies across gender and parenthood status. This is an important question that has been neglected by previous studies. Using the latest UK time-use data (N = 620) from 2020 to 2021 and Ordinary Least Squares regressions, the study finds that work time fragmentation generally predicts more subjective time pressure. Specifically, work time fragmentation is found to increase subjective time pressure more among women without children than mothers. However, this effect is inverted among men, as the fragmentation of work time predicts more subjective time pressure among fathers but not among men without children. These findings provide a nuanced understanding of the adverse consequences of 'role switching' and 'work schedule instability' and their interaction with gender and parenthood. Accordingly, future research should consider work time fragmentation as a vital indicator of job and life quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between knowledge hierarchies and gender stratification in research funding. Through a mixed-methods study combining data on 5460 funded and unfunded social science applications submitted to a research council in Western Europe, and nine interviews with current and former council members, we explore how applicants' disciplinary, thematic and methodological orientations intersect with gender to shape funding opportunities. Descriptive analysis indicates that women's proposals are underfunded, with a relative gender difference of around 20%. Using computational text analysis and mediation analysis, we approximate that around one-third of this disparity may be attributed to gender differences in disciplinary focus, thematic specialisations and methodologies. The interviews with council members allow us to make sense of these disparities and expose the disciplinary hierarchies and power struggles at play in the council, sometimes resulting in a devaluation of qualitative methods and, more broadly, interpretive, descriptive and exploratory approaches in proposal assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article problematises whether organisational commitments impact the representation of ethnic minorities in the university workforce. In doing so, it considers the institutional context and the broader restructuring of universities' personnel. The analysis is based on a longitudinal dataset of 120 universities, including university-level indicators of organisational commitments, institutional characteristics and ethnic minority staff numbers. The findings reveal that while on average, universities that are members of the Race Equality Charter exhibit higher shares of minority ethnic staff in higher-level contracts compared with those universities that are not members, joining the charter does not make a university more inclusive. Importantly, the share of minority ethnic staff is substantially lower in elite universities compared with all other universities, which indicates tensions between inclusion and university reputation. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to sociological institutionalist and organisational theories, and to higher education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]