Search

Public-sector reforms over the last three decades have fundamentally changed working conditions in almost all OECD countries. This chapter compares the consequences for public-sector workers in the US, where reforms took hold in the 1980s, and Germany, where reforms began unfolding in the 1990s and early 2000s. After a short description of the pre-reform and post-reform structure of the public-sector work in these two poignant cases, we investigate the consequences for public-sector job security and pressure across countries and over time. Our analyses of part-time work, contractual protections, and overtime hours draw on data of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Results show a remarkable and nearly parallel shift from full to part-time work in both countries in the last 30 years, albeit time-delayed in the case of Germany. Contractual insecurity measured by at-will (US) and fixed-term (Germany) contracts increased in both countries, with somewhat steeper increases in the US. The share of public-sector workers working overtime hours has increased, again in nearly parallel fashion, in the US and Germany since the mid-1990s owing to public-sector reforms. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of such changes and future trajectories.

Diversity has simultaneously become a pervasive goal and euphemism for racial differences in higher education. Although discourses within the postsecondary context highlight the positive impact of diversity on learning outcomes, organizational diversity efforts nevertheless warrant interrogation, given their possible obfuscation if not reification of, racial inequality and hierarchy. How do Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)—colleges and universities that are, by their very nature, racialized organizations within higher education—express and adapt to the challenges presented by diversity imperatives? In this article, we interrogate this question through systematic content analyses of visual and narrative materials from 31 HBCUs. Results highlight how these institutions often rely on the same mechanisms that characterize diversity within predominately White institutions (PWIs)—commodification of difference and disconnection from issues of racial equity. Consequently, diversity for HBCUs reflects the more general racialized inequality regime in higher education—a regime wherein these organizations largely reinforce ideas, such as racial capitalism, which have implications for racial equity. Our results and discussion hold implications for scholarship on organizational diversity but are also informative with regard to the capacity and constraints of racialized organizations to meet the needs and interests of those they serve.

The sociological literature, although rich on the topic of racial/ethnic hierarchy, often overlooks its spatially varying nature relative to group tensions and inequality. In this article, we address this gap by drawing on and analyzing four historically important U.S. urban cases (i.e., Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City) that reflect both compositional diversity and significant variation in racial/ethnic group sizes. Our analyses, which draw on U.S. Census microdata and content–coded newspaper reports (1910–1930), demonstrate considerable consistency in racial/ethnic labor market hierarchies, yet divergences in levels of labor market inequality. Specifically, our aggregate analyses and cross–city comparisons of sectoral representations and occupational returns reveal the importance of place–specific processes—processes consistent with what spatially sensitive queuing perspectives suggest about the bolstering of minority prospects in contexts where subordinated groups come to numerically dominate. As suggested by competition/threat perspectives, however, such gains from queuing are undermined at least to some extent by city–specific racial/ethnic antagonisms, industry–level segregation, and group closure. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for various streams of research on group inequality, labor market hierarchies, and spatial understandings of how they unfold across urban spaces.

The role of socioeconomic status (SES) in the etiology of childhood externalizing behavior remains unclear, especially within developmental models. Many scholars argue that material hardship (i.e. ...

Institutional integration has long been an important focus in literatures on inequality, education and mobility. Building on this work and drawing from multi-wave survey and records data from a large public university, the analyses we offer in this article provide unique and systematic comparative tests of first- versus continuing-generation inequalities in integration, disaggregated by academic versus social types, and with attention to other potentially influential status attributes. Our findings reveal: (1) clear overall inequalities in campus integration for first-generation students that cut across gender and race/ethnic lines; (2) a higher likelihood of employment among first-generation students-employment that tends to detract from integration opportunities; and (3) especially pronounced inequalities when it comes to forms of academic and social integration that entail bureaucratic- and resource-related barriers. We discuss the implications for understanding inequality and the first-generation experience in higher education and for more general sociological conceptions of institutional integration and mobility.

In this article, we build on prior sociological theory pertaining to power as well as historical research on antebellum slavery to offer an integrated framework of subordinate resistance – a framework that incorporates a matrix of potential responses ranging from collective action, to symbolic resistance, to projective agency, and even quiescence. Using text networks as an index, we then analyze a rich collection of antebellum slave narratives (n=128) to investigate such response possibilities. These thematic networks, consistent with a large body of historical research on American slavery, demonstrate central domains of enslavement in the United States and the diverse resistance strategies that the enslaved employed. Moreover, our more qualitative immersion into these thematic patterns and the narratives themselves—narratives that have been largely overlooked by sociologists—uniquely highlight how particular resistance strategies are deployed in specific everyday contexts and sometimes resolve into what seem, at first glance, to be quiescence. We discuss these findings, and conclude more broadly by highlighting how the sociological study of inequality and power would benefit from attention to the variety of resistance strategies subordinate actors in their everyday lives and in the uneven and sometimes dangerous contexts they traverse.

Item does not contain fulltext Classic theory is ambiguous regarding what is most meaningful for workers and workplaces. Are bureaucratic rules most consequential by providing predictability, as suggested by Weber, or problematic, owing to assaults on autonomy? And what of proximate social relations, seen as fundamental in ethnographic, resistance, and justice accounts? This article’s analyses, which draw on a unique sample of approximately 2,500 German workers across heterogeneous contexts, reveal pronounced effects of horizontal and vertical social relations on worker (i.e., satisfaction and fairness) and workplace (i.e., commitment and effort) outcomes. These effects, which hold for high- and low-status workers, exist beyond independent, mediating, or conditional associations with rules and have differing implications for women versus men. The authors discuss the importance of their findings for work, organizational, and inequality literatures and call for greater attention to relational dimensions of work-life, their frequent disconnect from bureaucratic structures, and the consequences for organizations and the individuals within 42 p.

Research on racial inequality in organizations typically (1) assumes constraining effects of bureaucratic structure on the capacity of powerful actors to discriminate or (2) reverts to individualistic interpretations emphasizing implicit biases or self-expressed motivations of gatekeepers. Such orientations are theoretically problematic because they ignore how bureaucratic structures and practices are immersed within and permeated by culturally normative racial meanings and hierarchies. This decoupling ultimately provides a protective, legitimating umbrella for organizational practices and gatekeeping actors – an umbrella under which differential treatment is enabled and discursively portrayed as meritocratic or even organizationally good. In this chapter, we develop a race-centered conception of organizational practices by drawing from a sample of over 100 content-coded workplace discrimination cases and analyzing both discriminatory encounters and employer justifications for inequality-generating conduct. Results show three non-mutually exclusive patterns that highlight the fundamentally racial character of organizations: (1) the racialization of bureaucracies themselves via the organizational valuation and pursuit of “ideal workers,” (2) the ostensibly bureaucratic and neutral, yet inequitable, policing of minority worker performance, and; (3) the everyday enforcement of racial status boundaries through harassment on the job, protection afforded to perpetrators, and bureaucratically enforced retaliation aimed at victims. The permeation of race-laden presumptions into organizations, their activation relative to oversight and bureaucratic policing, and the invoking of colorblind bureaucratic discourses and policies to legitimate discriminatory conduct are crucial to understanding the organizational dimensions of racial inequality production. We end by discussing the implications of our argument and results for future theory and research.

Has the adoption of “new governance” reforms over the last two decades eroded the public sector as a long-standing occupational niche for African Americans? Utilizing data from the General Social Survey, we address this issue in the context of earnings “returns” to three levels of job authority for African American men and women relative to their White counterparts. Findings, derived from analyses of three waves of the General Social Survey, indicate that the acceleration of this “business model” of work organization in the public sector has had relatively profound and negative consequences for African American income. Specifically, racial parity in earnings returns at all levels of authority in the “pre-reform” period (1992–1994) progressively eroded during “early reform” (2000–2002) and then even more so during the “late reform” (2010–2012) period. Much of this growing public sector disadvantage—a disadvantage that is approaching that seen in the private sector—is driven largely by income gaps between White and African American men, although a similar (though smaller) racial gap is witnessed among women. We conclude by discussing the occupational niche status of public sector work for African Americans, calling for further analyses of the growing inequality patterns identified in our analyses, and drawing attention to the implications for contemporary racial disadvantages.

In this article, we offer an overview and critical assessment of recent changes wrought by “new governance” reforms within public sector work, highlighting the implications specifically for Black–White inequality, and denote where further sociological analyses are warranted. These foci are important given the widely accepted—though hardly comprehensively examined—assumption that public sector employment remains a favorable “economic niche” for African Americans. Recent sociological research, including our own, suggests that this is likely no longer the case. The very structure and functioning of public sector work have changed owing to neoliberal agendas and reforms toward privatization over the last two decades, becoming less bureaucratic and increasingly mirroring processes and inequalities more traditionally characteristic of the private sector. We emphasize the consequences particularly for African Americans and call for deeper sociological analyses of public sector racial inequalities, processes, and their consequences.

Whether the public sector continues to offer African Americans an upwardly mobile “occupational niche” is unclear, especially in the face of contemporary reforms that run counter to workplace protections. In this article, and drawing on overtime data from Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we explore this question with a specific focus on the upward mobility of men into white-collar occupations. Findings suggest that the reform period of 2005–2010, characterized by increased employer discretion and an application of a “business model” to public sector work, undermined African American relative to White promotion prospects. What was once greater racial parity in the incidence, determinants, and timing of upward mobility during the pre-reform period (1985–1990) eroded during the reform period (2005–2010). Promotion-centered inequalities in the private sector, in contrast, while high, were more or less constant across the same time period. We conclude by discussing escalating public sector racial disadvantages, the processes undergirding them, and their implications for the likely contraction of the African American middle class.

The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer triggered U.S. and worldwide protests—protests that raised questions about police funding, use of force, and whether police officers are distinctly racist. In this article, the authors draw on nearly four decades of the General Social Survey to examine trends over time and specifically model whether those in law enforcement are more likely to hold racialized and arguably racist views, vested “blue” occupational interests, or both. Trends show declining public support for police expenditure and police use of force over time. The authors’ further modeling highlights stark differences between police and the general public, as well as between cops and those of similar occupational status. Specifically, police uniquely believe that they should receive more funding and have the right to use physical force against citizens; they are also more racist, a pattern especially apparent among white male officers. These findings, which largely support the arguments of current Black Lives Matter protesters, show how vested occupational interests and racialized orientations intersect in important ways, sometimes with perilous consequences.

The burgeoning sociological literature on African American/White men’s downward mobility has failed to examine dynamics at the working-class level and has not conducted analyses at the refined job level. Within the context of the minority vulnerability thesis, we address these shortcomings, and specifically utilizing data from the 2011–2015 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we examine racial difference in the incidence, determinants, and timing of downward mobility from two working-class job types, elite blue collar and rank-and-file jobs. Findings our expectation of ongoing, contemporary vulnerability: from both working-class origins, African Americans relative to Whites experience higher rates of downward mobility, experience it on a broad basis that is not explained by traditional stratification-based causal factors (e.g., human capital and job/labor market characteristics) and experience downward mobility more quickly. Further, these racial inequalities are pronounced at the elite blue-collar level, probably because of heightened practices of social closure when supervisory responsibility is at stake. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for understanding both the ongoing and future socioeconomic well-being of African Americans in the US.

Little sociological attention over the last two decades has focused on the deprivation experienced by indigenous people. Fusing insights from American Indian history and the race and labor market inequality literatures, we address this gap in this article through a historically informed labor market analysis of poverty—an analysis that considers the pervasiveness of contemporary Native poverty, its potential basis in labor market opportunities, and the extent to which it has been patterned by two major demographic and economic shifts: (1) the rapid urbanization of the American Indian population and (2) the proliferation of tribally owned casinos. Findings reveal, most notably, the incredibly rigid and durable character of poverty for this population, historically and currently and across geographic space, and with little overall impact of local labor market opportunity. The presence of tribal casinos reduces such poverty, but only to a small degree and not nearly enough to compensate for sizable American Indian and white poverty differentials. Group history is key, we conclude, to shaping how space, labor markets, and economic development reduce or buttress relations of inequality.

Aging workers experience the longest unemployment spells of any segment of the labor force and are much more likely than their younger counterparts to drop out of employment entirely. Yet, we still know little about aging workers’ struggles to regain employment following job loss. Do they see themselves as structurally disadvantaged? And, what are the consequences for self-perceptions, notions of fairness, and even mental health? We fill this gap by drawing on 52 semi-structured qualitative interviews with workers aged 40–65 who lost jobs during the Great Recession and have been attempting to find work since. Notable is their keen awareness of both age-specific labor market disadvantages and processes complicating re-employment for all unemployed workers during this period. Respondents articulate sophisticated analyses of how employer biases, credentialism, the job search process, and changes in the economy present very real barriers to reemployment. These perceptions and experiences, our materials suggest, have far-reaching social-psychological consequences, including loss of belief in meritocracy within major institutions; questioning of self-worth; and feelings of isolation, hopelessness and depression—consequences to which stratification scholars should devote more attention, especially since many aging workers become discouraged and eventually drop out of the labor force.

Social science accounts have only recently begun to recognize “new governance” shifts, including, but not limited to, privatization occurring in public sector institutions (e.g., education, prisons, the military) and in the functioning of federal and state sector jobs. This article, which presents unique analyses of wages across time using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and retested on similarly representative data from the Integrated Public Use Micro Sample (IPUMS) and the American Community Survey (ACS), examines the extent to which these changes have generated significant inequalities for African Americans relative to whites. Most important, our results show that the relative racial parity in wages that once existed in public sector employment has eroded in the face of new governance, and racial inequalities for both men and women have intensified. Supplementary and decomposition analyses further highlight the potential escalation of discrimination as a core mechanism under new governance. Along with discussing the short- and long-term implications, we conclude by suggesting an important corrective to stratification scholarship—a corrective that highlights what structural transformation may mean for inequality and that recognizes important shifts that have made the public sector, much like the private sector, a locus of contemporary racial disadvantage.

The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 and the Ghost Dance movement that preceded it offer a compelling sociological case for understanding legitimation, elite framing, and repression. Building on the social movements literature and theoretical insights on power, institutions, and inequality, we engage in multimethod, in-depth analyses of a rich body of archived correspondence from key institutional actors at the time. Doing so contributes to the literature by drawing attention to (1) the cultural foundations of inequality and repression; (2) super-ordinate framing by political elites and the state; and (3) key institutional conflicts and their consequences. We find that, within an ambiguous colonial context, officials of the Office of Indian Affairs and federal politicians shelved benign military observations and, instead, amplified ethnocentric and threat frames. Force was consequently portrayed as justifiable, which increased the likelihood of the massacre. We conclude by discussing the utility of our results for conceptions of culture, power, inequality, the state, and state violence.

This chapter focuses on Ronald L.Akers' social structure and social learning (SSSL) model of delinquency and addresses the gap by developing a more explicit conceptual and operational focus on labor market opportunity, adolescent violence, and potentially mediating social learning and family processes. It extends the literature by testing a social learning model of subcultural formation and violence among adolescents that has its roots in local labor market conditions and opportunity. The chapter reviews the key issues that have hindered subcultural perspectives and analyses, and describes the conceptual model that underlies the research. It tests SSSL model on a nationally representative sample of adolescents. The chapter discusses the potential effect of local labor market structure on social learning and, consequently, adolescent fighting—a clear-cut manifestation and indicator of violence. It concludes by discussing the implications of these results and SSSL model for the study of adolescent delinquency specifically, and for theories pertaining to structural opportunity, social learning processes, and violence generally.

The sociological literature on workplace inequality has been relatively clear regarding racial disparities and ongoing vulnerabilities to contemporary structural and employer biases. We still know little, however, about the consequences of age and ageism for minority workers and susceptibilities to downward mobility. Coupling insights regarding race with recent work on employment-based age discrimination, we interrogate in this article African Americans and Whites, aged 55 and older, and the extent to which they experience job loss across time. Our analyses, beyond controlling for key background attributes, distinguish and disaggregate patterns for higher and lower level status managers and professionals and for men and women. Results, derived from data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, reveal unique and significant inequalities. Relative to their White and gender specific counterparts, older African American men and women experience notably higher rates of downward mobility—downward mobility that is not explained by conventional explanations (i.e., human capital credentials, job/labor market characteristics, etc.). Such inequalities are especially pronounced among men and for those initially occupying higher status white-collar managerial and professional jobs compared to technical/skilled professional and blue-collar “first line” supervisors. We tie our results to contemporary concerns regarding ageism in the workplace as well as minority vulnerability. We also suggest an ageism-centered corrective to existing race and labor market scholarship.

Pregnancy-based employment discrimination has long been a topic of interest for gender inequality scholars and civil rights agencies. Prior work suggests that employer stereotypes and financial interests leave pregnant women vulnerable to being fired. We still know little, however, about women’s interpretations of their terminations and how employers justify such decisions in the face of arguably protective laws. This article provides much needed, in-depth analyses of such dynamics and a relational account of pregnancy-based employment discrimination claims. Elaborating on theoretical expositions of power and research surrounding the patriarchal character of organizational life, we draw on unique quantitative and qualitative data from verified cases of pregnancy-based firing discrimination. Our analyses reveal a two-pronged legitimation process where employers symbolically vilified pregnant workers while simultaneously amplifying ostensibly meritocratic organizational procedures and concerns. Pregnancy discrimination plaintiffs attempted to counter employer arguments. Yet, their limited power within the organizational hierarchy along with the culturally resonant nature of employer logics—logics that seem gender-neutral but that reify gendered assumptions and prioritize business profit—place pregnant women at a considerable disadvantage. Without attending to such cultural and structural power imbalances and the relational processes that undergird them, pregnancy discrimination will remain a significant problem.

Organizational scandals have become all too commonplace; from investment firms' financial improprieties to sexual abuse cover-ups, rule-breaking has become a “normal” feature of organizational life. Although there is considerable scholarly work on rule-breaking, efforts to explain it remain theoretically fragmented. Here we identify two fundamental dimensions of bureaucratic rule-breaking and develop a coherent theoretical conception of it as a structurally patterned and interactionally mediated sociological fact. First, rule-breaking may be permitted or contested by those charged with rule enforcement. Manifestations of rule-breaking take on a routine character only where it is unofficially allowed; where it is not, conflict ensues. Second, the hierarchical structure of bureaucracy is mirrored by an organizational hierarchy of rule-breaking. Rule-breaking can be undertaken by individuals acting alone, it can be coordinated by workgroups, or it can be organized by top management as a matter of unofficial ...

Assimilation and split labor market dynamics are core foci in research on immigration, race/ethnicity, and inequality. Little work, however, systematically analyzes how assimilation and group-level power dynamics within labor markets intersect relative to employment trajectories and rewards. In this article, we do so by offering integrated analyses of racial/ethnic inequalities for an important case, New York City from 1910 to 1930. Our multi-method analyses draw from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) and content-coded coverage from the New York Times for the period. Quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate a clear racial/ethnic hierarchy as well as group-level variations in opportunity relative to industrial concentration, segregation, and discrimination. Assimilative attributes and generational status mattered, yet certain inequalities were more firmly entrenched. Most pronounced, as seen in our qualitative analyses, were processes of social closure, discrimination, and related exclusionary constraints—constraints encountered and eventually alleviated, to some degree, for new white ethnics but not for African Americans. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and empirical utility of considering the embedded nature of assimilation within broader contexts of racial/ethnic closure in labor market opportunities and also relative to historical and contemporary eras.

Sociological research on work and job authority, while most often highlighting the material implications of workplace status, has largely overlooked the implications of experiential aspects of work for broader orientations toward the social world including, most poignantly, stratification beliefs. Building on classic and contemporary statements regarding the centrality of workplace experiences, and utilizing data from the 2012 General Social Survey, we analyze job authority specifically and its consequences for general beliefs surrounding inequality. Results, which account for a variety of other status attributes and material benefits of employment, demonstrate how authority tasks, especially in concert with authority tenure, shape traditionally conservative ideological stances, specifically: (1) restrictive support for socioeconomic redistributive policy, and; (2) perceptions of the functional necessity of socioeconomic inequality. These patterns are robust in the face of controls, though tend to be stronger among Whites and private sector workers compared to African American and public sector workers. Our findings inform inequality scholarship by highlighting the significance of workplace experiences for stratification worldviews and arguably support for redistributive policy. They also extend the sociology of work literature by relating how workplace experiences are carried into the broader social world.