Joyce J. Kim. 2024. “A Moral Dilemma of ‘Selling Out’: Race, Class, and Career Considerations among Elite College Students.” Social Problems. Online First.  https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spae056

Abstract: Research on occupational choice focuses on individualistic work values and emphasizes economic returns. Drawing from 62 in-depth interviews with Asian, Black, and White first-generation, low-income (FGLI), and middle-class students at an elite university, I argue that students’ career decisions comprise a moral dimension. How students contended with this dimension varied based on the intersection of their racial and class backgrounds. Specifically, patterns broadly align with two categories: contingent objections to certain high-prestige, high-paying careers arising from individual priorities or concern for social good, and linked obligations to broader collectivities, such as ethnoracial groups or families. While students across all racial and class backgrounds raised objections based on different individual priorities, FGLI students primarily mentioned objections based on the value of social good. Across class backgrounds, Asian and Black students more often cited obligations based on ethnoracial uplift compared to their White peers. Asian and Black FGLI students prioritized family contributions more strongly than their White FGLI counterparts. Paradoxically, some students used these evaluative logics to justify “selling out” in pursuit of high-prestige, high-paying jobs, whereas others used these justifications to reject them. This study furthers understanding of the cultural processes behind social inequalities and highlights how the intersection of race and class shapes moral understandings.

Clair, Matthew and Sophia Hunt. Forthcoming. “Moral reconciling at career launch: Politics, race, and occupational choice” Socio-Economic Review. https://academic.oup.com/ser/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/ser/mwae061/7796896

Abstract: Recent research suggests that college-educated young adults, especially those who are politically liberal and/or racially marginalized, exhibit moral reservations about their intended occupations. How do they justify entering occupations that conflict with their morals, and with what consequences? This article examines the case of 74 mostly liberal prospective law school students from a range of racial backgrounds followed over 2 years. In interviews at career launch, respondents criticized the legal profession for its perceived perpetuation of inequality and violence. Despite their moral reservations, they articulated three occupational justification narratives for attending law school: lifting up (exceptional lawyering); leveraging out (legal education for nonlawyer aspirations); and leaning in (conscientious class mobility/maintenance). These narratives differentiate between morally ‘good’ and ‘bad’ occupational domains—a cultural-cognitive process we term moral reconciling. We theorize how moral reconciling at career launch charts young adults down different early career trajectories, with implications for occupational sorting and change.

Two new publications:

1. Luis Edward Tenorio, “Legal Care Work: Emotion and Care Work in Lawyering with Unaccompanied Minors,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2024.2401601#abstract

ABSTRACT
We know legal representation can improve the likelihood of favorable legal outcomes for immigrants, what some scholars refer to as the ‘representation effect’. But can legal representation affect client’s broader integration and resettlement outcomes along the timeline of their legal case? If so, how? Drawing from literature on emotion work, care work, and how attorneys interact with immigrant clients, I propose the concept of legal care work to capture the emotion and care work strategies attorneys undertake to respond to immigrant clients’ broader set of needs. Based on a rich qualitative study of attorneys and Central American unaccompanied minor clients, I show how the legal care work attorneys perform illustrate the need for an expanded conceptualization of the ‘representation effect’ they have on clients, impacting behaviors and outcomes across various dimensions of everyday life. Further, I show how who receives and is denied legal care work—a product of biases and stereotypes, as well as bureaucratic dysfunction—exacerbate disparities along different socio-demographic lines (e.g. race, age, gender). These findings underscore the value of interrogating the role attorneys play in facilitating the transformative effects of the law and advancing social change in complex and hostile legal contexts.

2. Joseph-Goteiner, D. (2024). From Degrees to Dimensions: Accounts of Workers’ Socioeconomic Dependence on Platforms. Socius, 10. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231241275412

ABSTRACT
Platform work is one prominent type of independent contracting in the United States. Yet the independent status of platform workers is contested. Some scholars call platform workers dependent contractors. Others are measuring workers’ economic dependence to support better classification. Given platform workers’ heterogeneity, current efforts to classify workers’ dependence might be missing different kinds of dependencies. This article asks the following: What are the dimensions of economic dependence that platform workers experience? I interviewed 47 individuals working on the microwork platform Prolific and analyzed three dimensions that were salient in workers’ accounts: “episodic,” “discretionary,” and “projected” dependencies. These dimensions can help us to measure platform dependence. Furthermore, this article theorizes how each form of dependence might reinforce economic precarity. This study calls for further connections between platform studies and literature on household finance, consumption, and culture.

1. Laboring in the Shadow of Empire: Race, Gender, and Care Work in Portugal

by Celeste Vaughan Curington

Laboring in the Shadow of Empire: Race, Gender, and Care Work in Portugal examines the everyday lives of an African-descendant care service workforce that labors in an ostensibly “anti-racial” Europe and against the backdrop of the Portuguese colonial empire. While much of the literature on global care work has focused on Asian and Latine migrant care workers, there is comparatively less research that explicitly examines African care workers and their migration histories to Europe. Sociologist Celeste Vaughan Curington focuses on Portugal—a European setting with comparatively liberal policies around family settlement and naturalization for migrants. In this setting, rapid urbanization in the late twentieth century, along with a national push to reconcile work and family, has shaped the growth of paid home care and cleaning service industries. Many researchers focus on informal work settings, where immigrant rights are restricted and many workers are undocumented or without permanent residence status. Curington instead examines workers who have accessed citizenship or permanent residence status and also explores African women’s experiences laboring in care and service industries in the formal market, revealing how deeply colonial and intersectional logics of a racialized and international division of reproductive labor in Portugal render these women “hyper-invisible” and “hyper-visible” as “appropriate” workers in Lisbon.

2. Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer

by Eli Revelle Yano Wilson

As workers attempt new modes of employment in the era of the Great Resignation, they face a labor landscape that is increasingly uncertain and stubbornly unequal. With Handcrafted Careers, sociologist Eli Revelle Yano Wilson dives headfirst into the everyday lives of workers in the craft beer industry to address key questions facing American workers today: about what makes a good career, who gets to have one, and how careers progress without established models.

Wilson argues that what ends up contributing to divergent career paths in craft beer is a complex interplay of social connections, personal tastes, and cultural ideas, as well as exclusionary industry structures. The culture of work in craft beer is based around “bearded white guy” ideals that are gendered and racialized in ways that limit the advancement of women and people of color. A fresh perspective on niche industries, Handcrafted Careers offers sharp insights into how people navigate worlds of work that promote ideas of authenticity and passion-filled careers even amid instability.

More information on the book via a Q&A with the Author:  https://www.ucpress.edu/blog-posts/65971-qa-with-eli-revelle-yano-wilson-author-of-handcrafted-careers