Author: Jessica Urzúa

New Publication: “Varieties of Capitalism and Cross-national Variation in Fertility Rates”

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Movahed, Masoud, and Emilio A. Parrado. 2026. “Varieties of Capitalism and Cross-national Variation in Fertility Rates.” Demography 63 (2): 511–536. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-12563895.

Abstract: The institutional approach to explaining cross-national variation in demographic outcomes has gained increasing visibility in both academic research and public policy discourse. In this vein, much of the literature has focused on the effects of welfare programs on risk management and the associated costs of fertility. However, an alternative, more comprehensive perspective, namely, the “varieties of capitalism,” emphasizes the role of broader social-structural and institutional characteristics of national economies in generating socioeconomic outcomes. This perspective has not been extended to debates around cross-national differences in demographic outcomes. We fill this void by elaborating on a varieties of capitalism account of cross-national and longitudinal variation in fertility rates. Drawing on panel data spanning more than three decades (1985‒2019) across 21 countries in the Global North, we investigate how institutional factors, through the lens of the varieties of capitalism perspective, correlate with differences in total fertility rates between countries and over time. Our results demonstrate that crucial institutional dimensions, such as centralization of wage bargaining, the employment protection index, and active labor market policies, are associated with variation in total fertility rates across countries and over time.

Authors:

  • Masoud Movahed is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
  • Emilio A. Parrado is Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology and Director of Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Call for Abstracts: Research Symposium on Young People’s Access to Social Rights

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The EU–Council of Europe Youth Partnership invites submissions for its upcoming Research Symposium: Young People’s Access to Social Rights, which will take place in Strasbourg, France, from September 15–17, 2026.

The symposium seeks research contributions examining young people’s access to social rights, with particular interest in work adopting a European, cross-national, or comparative perspective.

Possible themes include:

  • Access to social protection and quality public services
  • Access to education and training
  • Access to health services
  • Access to housing
  • Access to employment
  • Access to participation
  • Access to social rights for minority social groups
  • Access to sport, leisure, and culture

The deadline for abstract submissions is May 31, 2026.

For additional information and submission details, please see the links below:

For questions about the symposium, please contact Maria-Carmen Pantea, Chair of the Scientific Committee, at maria.pantea@ubbcluj.ro.

New Publication: “The Foundational Role of Legal Status Categories in Stratifying Job Loss Outcomes”

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Protasiuk, Ewa. 2026. “The Foundational Role of Legal Status Categories in Stratifying Job Loss Outcomes.” Social Problems. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spag014

Abstract: Job loss is a common, stratifying experience in the contemporary labor market, but scholars have undertheorized its relationship to a major axis of inequality: legal status. To bridge this gap, this paper uses qualitative data from interviews and participant observation to compare outcomes after job loss among 76 restaurant workers in three different legal status categories (U.S.-born citizens, immigrants who are legally authorized to work, and immigrants without this authorization). Situated amidst a discussion of unemployment regulations and legal status categories as sites of governance and stratification, my findings point to two mechanisms of legal status-based stratification among unemployed workers. First, legal status directly determines eligibility for unemployment relief. Second, legal status divergently shapes interactions with the unemployment relief system due to differing risks of legal violence associated with distinct statuses. I show that, through these mechanisms, legal status stratifies workers’ agency over the timing and conditions of their return to work after job loss. I also discuss gendered patterns within legal status categories. These findings extend the framework of unemployment as a socially stratifying institution, integrate legal status into theories of gender in unemployment stratification, and contribute to literatures on immigrant job loss as well as immigration and stratification.

Author: Ewa Protasiuk is an incoming Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Call for Papers: HJSR Special Issue 49 – Rural Action

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The Humboldt Journal of Social Relations (HJSR) invites submissions for its 2027 Special Issue 49, Rural Action in the United States: Community-Driven Strategies for Equity, Transformation and Participatory Research.

This special issue aims to advance scholarly and practice-based conversations about rural communities as dynamic sites of both structural inequity and transformative action. The editors welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions examining the diverse forms, sites, and expressions of rural action across the United States.

Submission Information

  • Abstract deadline (250 words): June 30, 2026
  • Notification of selected abstracts: July 15, 2026
  • Full research articles (maximum 8,500 words) due: September 15, 2026
  • Commentaries and creative writing submissions (maximum 3,000 words) due: November 15, 2026

Abstracts should be sent to: hjsr@humboldt.edu

HJSR 2027 Co-Editors

  • Dawn Arledge, MA — California Center for Rural Policy
  • Nino Dzotsenidze, PhD — California Center for Rural Policy
  • Nick Ortiz, MA — California Center for Rural Policy

For additional information, please view the full call for papers here.

OOW Virtual Panel on Platform Work

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May 6th, 2-3 pm EDT (11am-noon PDT/ 7-8pm BDT)

We invite you to join our virtual panel on digital platform work featuring:

Dr. Elif Birced, Dr. Hatim Rahman, and Dr. Kathleen Griesbach.

Work on digital platforms has exploded in the past decade and continues to evolve with technology. Today, these platforms cover an ever-increasing range of jobs. This panel brings together research on various types of platform work, including content creation, professional services, and ride-hailing and delivery.  

Register for the Zoom link here: https://tinyurl.com/oowplatformpanel

Presenter Bios:

Elif Birced is a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT Sloan School of Management and Schwarzman College of Computing. Broady, her research is at the intersection of sociology of work, cultural production and social media. Specifically, she studies how technology is reshaping work, worker commitment, and control over work with a particular focus on social media platforms. She will be an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Villanova University, starting in Fall 2026. 

Hatim A. Rahman is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations and Sociology (by courtesy) at Northwestern University. His research investigates how artificial intelligence is impacting the nature of work and employment relationships in organizations and labor markets. His award-winning book, Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers (University of California Press), investigates how digital labor platform organizations use algorithms to control workers’ job opportunities. 

Kathleen Griesbach is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is broadly interested in work and inequality, the significance of time and space for social experience, and the dynamic interplay between culture and economic life. Much of her research examines how temporal and spatial instability shape workers’ experiences, and how workers in turn pursue dignity, meaning, and a path forward amid economic instability. She received her PhD in Sociology from Columbia University and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne.

SER Café Event: Taxing the Super Rich

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Join us for the next SER Café event on the theme “Taxing the Super Rich.” This session will feature a discussion with recent Socio-Economic Review authors Marlies Glasius (University of Amsterdam) and Andy Summers (London School of Economics).

In her 2025 article “Tax talk in the Rich Lists: from celebrating to scrutinizing the super-rich,” Marlies Glasius examines journalism surrounding the Sunday Times and Forbes Rich Lists from 1995 to 2022 to analyze how media narratives about taxing the super-rich have evolved, showing that coverage of wealth taxation and tax avoidance changed markedly after the global financial crisis.

The second article, “‘But Switzerland’s boring’: tax migration and the pull of place-specific cultural capital,” by Sam Friedman, Victoria Gronwald, Andy Summers, and Emma Taylor, investigates how economic elites weigh taxation when deciding where to live, finding that attachment to place—particularly London’s cultural infrastructure—often outweighs the financial incentives of tax migration. Andy Summers will join the discussion to represent the author team.

The event will take place on 30 March 2026 at 09:00 PDT / 17:00 BST / 18:00 CEST. Please register at this link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/meeting/register/Wf4VkWXFS12d0lfYdkuBaA.

As with all SER Café events, this session will prioritize dynamic conversation with the authors over lengthy presentations. Come ready to engage, ask questions, and discuss. Our authors look forward to your questions and comments.

Team SER Café (Ezgi, Fan, and Kyungmo)
Socio-Economic Review

Developing and Communicating Your Scholarly Identity

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Virtual Event for Graduate Student Scholars of Organizations, Occupations, and Work

Date: February 19, 2026
Time: 2:00–3:30 PM Eastern / 11:00 AM–12:30 PM Pacific
Location: Zoom
Registration required: www.tinyurl.com/oowgradevent

This virtual event is an opportunity for graduate students who study organizations, occupations, and work to: 

  • meet peers with similar interests; 
  • learn about how to develop and effectively communicate your scholarly identity to others; and 
  • ask questions and receive advice from a panel of advanced grad students and recent PhDs in academia and in industry!

The event is open to any graduate student with these interests; membership in ASA or the OOW section is not required. 

By the end of the event, you will have learned and practiced how to effectively communicate your scholarly identity and research—an important skill for the job market, meeting new people at conferences, and just getting more comfortable talking to others about your research. Plus, you’ll get a chance to meet other grad students with similar interests and get your questions answered by people who successfully landed a postdoc or job—and have recent experience effectively communicating their research to others.

Register to receive the Zoom link: www.tinyurl.com/oowgradevent.

If you have any questions, please contact a member of the OOW Mentorship committee:

New Publication: “The Problem with Rapport in Interview-Based Studies”

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Rao, Aliya Hamid. 2026. “The Problem with Rapport in Interview-Based Studies.” Qualitative Sociology.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-025-09619-8

Abstract: Rapport is an orienting principle in qualitative research. It is a capacious concept which, in practice, is deployed by researchers in a wide variety of ways. Despite its definitional ambiguity, in interview-based studies, researchers often link rapport to obtaining more open and honest – and thus high-quality – data. While rapport has been critiqued in the ethnographic tradition, these critiques have not extended to the particularities of interview-based studies. I offer two critiques of rapport as an orienting principle in interview-based studies. First, I question the assumption that rapport is an unmitigated methodological positive and consider instances when it may not be particularly useful or may even be detrimental to data collection. Second, I argue that the privileged position rapport occupies as an ideal-type of researcher-participant relationship risks foreclosing other types of researcher-participant relationships. The overemphasis on rapport may serve to harm data transparency and epistemic accountability. I argue for de-centering rapport as an orienting principle for interview-based studies.

Author:

Aliya Hamid Rao is an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics (Department of Methodology).

Call for Applications: 2026 Warwick Summer School on Practice and Process Studies

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To Know is to Act: Revisiting and rethinking learning and knowing from practice & process perspectives

An international gathering dedicated to the study, advancement and future development of practice-based studies in organisation, administrative and social studies, University of Warwick, Tuesday 30 June and Wednesday 01 and Thursday 02 July 2026.

Keynote Speakers

  • Jean Lave, Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley
  • Erik Rietveld, Socrates Professor, Senior Researcher, University of Amsterdam
  • Callen Anthony, Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations, NYU Stern

Research Clinics & Faculty

Participants will have the opportunity to present their work in research clinics and receive feedback from peers and senior scholars, including:

  • Ann Langley, HEC Montréal & Warwick Business School
  • Davide Nicolini, Warwick Business School
  • Hari Tsoukas, University of Cyprus & Warwick Business School
  • Jörgen Sandberg, University of Queensland
  • Katharina Dittrich, Warwick Business School
  • Qian Li, Warwick Business School
  • Omid Omidvar, Warwick Business School
  • Ila Bharatan, Warwick Business School

Application Details

  • Application deadline: Friday, 28 February 2026
  • Notification & registration deadline: Monday, 31 March 2026
  • Format: In-person
  • Location: University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

Apply here: Application form
More information: Summer School webpage

For questions, please contact IKON@wbs.ac.uk.

New Book: The Meritocracy Paradox

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Emilio J. Castilla, The Meritocracy Paradox: Where Talent Management Strategies Go Wrong and How to Fix Them (Columbia University Press)

Description:
Drawing on decades of research, the book reveals why well-intentioned talent management strategies often fail to deliver fairness—and what organizations and their leaders can do to build workplaces where opportunities truly match merit.

Already endorsed by leading scholars and practitioners, The Meritocracy Paradox offers timely insights for anyone interested in equity, organizational performance, and the future of work.

For more information, go to: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-meritocracy-paradox/9780231208420/

Author information:
Emilio J. Castilla is the NTU Professor of Management and a Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is codirector of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research. Castilla’s research focuses on organizations, networks, and workplace inequality, with a particular emphasis on the social dynamics of work and employment.