Category: Announcements

Paper Development Workshop on the Experience of Illegality | University of St. Gallen, Switzerland | Apr 1–2, 2026 | Abstracts Due Dec 15, 2025

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PAPER DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP (PDW)

The Experience of Illegality
Bodies, identities, moralities

April 1 & 2, 2026, Institute of Sociology, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland

Organizing committee
Loïc Pignolo, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.
Guillaume Dumont, Ethnographic Institute, Emlyon Business School, France.

Abstract submission
Please send an abstract of 300 words and a short biographical note to gdumont@em-lyon.com and loic.pignolo@unisg.ch by December 15, 2025. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15, 2026. Papers must be submitted by March 15, 2026.

There is no registration fee, and we will cover the lunch on both days and the dinner on the first day. Additionally, partial grants for travel and accommodation can be provided to a small number of participants with limited resources. Please indicate if you require financial support.

Participation in the workshop is open to all upon registration.
For any additional details please visit: https://www.guillaumedumont.eu/illegality-pdw

Purpose and format
This PDW aims to provide guidance to researchers from various disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology, criminology, and organizational studies) at different stages of their careers, offering support in developing their papers. Invited discussants will help participants consider novel ways to utilize their data to craft a compelling narrative and to create a theoretical contribution based on these data in a collegial manner. The PDW will be structured as a two-day interactive workshop. Each author will be given 10 minutes to present the paper and 35 minutes for discussion. Two discussants will review each paper and provide developmental feedback to strengthen and improve the authors’ work. Furthermore, all authors must also commit to reading two selected papers before the workshop to provide additional feedback. 

We do not expect the papers to be polished and well-finished. Still, they should be sufficiently advanced to be reviewed by the discussants, build upon a strong empirical foundation, and demonstrate the potential to contribute to developing a broader understanding of the experience of illegality. Given the workshop’s aim, published papers will not be accepted.

Theme
Popular perceptions of illegality often stem from sensationalist portrayals in the media, movies, or TV shows. These accounts depict, at times, dangerous criminals, mafia-like and cartel organizations, and crime-ridden neighborhoods where simply visiting could lead to one’s demise. Likewise, they associate illegality with individuals who strive to stay under the radar, bending the rules for their own personal gain, disregarding laws, moral norms, or ethical considerations for themselves or others. Such accounts render illegality inherent to specific practices, activities, and individuals through their naturalization, for instance, due to personal traits, lifestyles, life trajectories, or the characteristics of a particular area. 

The ethnography of the daily experience of illegality, however, offers a very different picture, one that foregrounds the socio-cultural, as well as economic and political construction of illegality (Flores and Schachter 2018) and its multi-layered consequences for those subjected to these regimes. As migration studies demonstrated, illegality is “a form of juridical status, a sociopolitical condition, and a way of being-in-the-world” (Willen 2019:47). Illegality, in that sense, not only shapes the social world of individuals subjected to illegalization processes (e.g. Sigona 2012) but also has a profound impact on their inward parts. It is an eminently embodied, temporal, and subjective experience (Garza 2018; Gutiérrez-Cueli et al. 2024)—a construct that must be analyzed rather than reified or naturalized.

This call for papers takes as its structuring theme how illegality is experienced by people in the daily conduct of their lives. Specifically, we invite papers that focus on the intricacies between illegality and the bodies, identities, and moralities of those involved in illegal activities across illegal or legal markets. Methodologically, then, we expect contributors to employ ethnographic or, more broadly, qualitative research methods. This combination, we believe, is uniquely positioned to reveal the penetration of illegality in many aspects of the lives of workers, clients, consumers, or managers are subjected to it in ways that are most often invisible to external outsiders. We also expect these accounts of micro-level field dynamics to connect with broader, structural trends, as illegality, despite being experienced subjectively, is a socio-cultural, economic, and political construction with concrete implications. We further structure our inquiry into the experience of illegality around three main areas—bodies, identities, and moralities—to be explored either in relation to one another or independently, as well as across contexts: 

Bodies: We are interested in the embodiment of illegalization. Illegality, indeed, is not a mere label applied to people and, thus, external to them. Instead, it is profoundly embodied and enacted (Holmes 2023), as well as reacted to (Gonzales and Chavez 2012). Resultingly, we expect papers that address how illegality and illegalization shape the body, for instance, through imposing circumstances for life and work on people. Likewise, we are also interested in papers examining how the body can be played out and potentially instrumentalized due to this imposed condition, for instance, through specific bodily practices that derive from the illegalization or aim to avoid detection (Perrin 2018). Overall, we welcome proposals that address the embodiment of illegality in its various forms.

Identities: In a context where the legal is usually viewed as legitimate, illegality and illegalization carry consequences for individual and collective identities. Accordingly, we are interested in papers looking at questions such as how illegalization impacts self-representation across different spheres of life (e.g., work, leisure), how individuals gain respect and establish themselves through alternative means when navigating circumstances of illegality (Erickson, Hochstetler, and Copes 2019; Estrada and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2011), which coping mechanisms they develop to address illegalization, how the association of illegality with specific groups shapes the construction of collective identities, and how illegality nurture specific uncertain future that are imagined and enacted through these identities. 

Moralities: Illegality and illegalization are typically motivated and justified based on broader moral principles (Fassin 2012), over which governmental institutions have a monopoly and the power to enforce (Weber 1946). Given the multiplicity of moral orders (Boltanski and Thévenot 1991), we invite papers that examine how individuals and groups navigate the existence of multiple, coexisting moralities that may conflict due to illegality. We also expect papers examining how people contest the imposition of a broader moral order (Hübschle 2017; Paul Mmahi and Usman 2020), as well as how they negotiate among different moralities and express their discontent, for instance, through the emergence of advocacy groups contesting the banning of activities or reclaiming social justice (De Rond, 2025).

For any additional details please visit: https://www.guillaumedumont.eu/illegality-pdw

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.

Announcement: Please Join Socio-Economic Review (SER) Café Event this Friday, November 14th, 2025 via Zoom!

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Join us for an engaging SER Café event featuring a thought-provoking discussion with recent Socio-Economic Review authors, Matthew Clair (Stanford University) and Rachel Kim (Harvard University).

The paper by Matthew Clair and Sophia Hunt, “Moral reconciling at career launch: politics, race, and occupational choice?“, explores how young adults justify entering morally conflicting careers through narratives of lifting up, leveraging out, and leaning in. Rachel Kim investigates how tech workers’ trust in corporate ethics programs shapes their moral evaluations of their employers and work in “The internal effects of corporate “tech ethics”: how technology professionals evaluate their employers’ crises of moral legitimacy“.

The event will take place on Friday, November 14th, 2025, 8:30 AM Pacific Time / 11:30 AM Eastern Time / 5:30 p.m. Central European Time.

Please register at this link:
https://utexas.zoom.us/meeting/register/BT04tFChRJadD4eyDD17dw

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 these critical contributions to the field. Our authors look forward to your questions and comments. 

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

New Publication: “Workplace Productivity: Gender, Parenthood, and Career Consequences in the United States”

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Yavorsky, Jill, Yue Qian, and Rebecca Glauber. 2025. “Workplace Productivity: Gender, Parenthood, and Career Consequences in the United States.” Gender, Work & Organization 1–21. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gwao.70027

Main Findings: Using a novel survey experiment fielded among 975 US managers, we find that managers more severely penalize mothers, compared to fathers, when their job productivity decreases due to childcare issues outside their control. This result was primarily driven by men managers who gave fathers a greater benefit of the doubt when it came to their decreased productivity. 

Abstract: Many dual-earner parents face ongoing challenges to securing reliable and accessible childcare, which potentially affect their productivity at work and consequential career rewards. Although productivity can ebb and flow, limited research has examined how productivity changes influence parents’ access to organizational rewards, especially when productivity changes result from childcare issues outside their control. The answer to this question is crucial for understanding gender inequality given that childcare issues are more likely to affect mothers’ productivity and employers could enact gender biases toward mothers (or fathers) when their productivity changes. Using a novel survey experiment fielded among 975 US managers, we assessed how a parent’s productivity changes (because of childcare issues outside their control) influenced managers’ recommendations of future organizational rewards (pay, promotions, etc.) to the parent. First, we find that managers assigned lower career rewards to workers whose productivity decreased, relative to workers whose productivity increased or stayed constant. Second, managers more severely penalized mothers, compared to fathers, when their productivity decreased. Third, exploratory analyses suggested that the widened gender gap in career rewards among parents whose productivity decreased was driven by men managers who penalized fathers less than women managers, primarily because men managers did not view fathers’ decreased productivity as evidence of reduced competence, professional commitment, or interest in advancement. By revealing pro-male biases that help explain the greater penalties faced by mothers relative to fathers when their productivity declined, our findings expose potential long-lasting impacts of parents experiencing disruptions to childcare on gender inequality in the workplace.

Authors:

Jill Yavorsky is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Organizational Science at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

Yue Qian is a Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia.

Rebecca Glauber is a Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire.


New Book: Managing Corporate Virtue

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Laure Bereni, Managing Corporate Virtue: The Politics of Workplace Diversity in New York and Paris (Oxford University Press, 2025)

Description:
A major tenet of contemporary capitalism holds that what is good for business can align with what is good for society. Efforts towards more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces epitomize this rising ideology, termed responsible capitalism. An increasingly common managerial mantra is “diversity means business.” But how does it play out in the daily life of organizations?

Drawing on interviews with diversity managers, a historical review of practitioner literature, and observations from organizations in New York City and Paris, Managing Corporate Virtue goes beyond the rhetoric of DEI initiatives to uncover the concrete challenges faced by those tasked with implementing them. Laure Bereni reveals the persistent fragility of diversity efforts, which are often sidelined; subject to the variations of the legal, social, and political environment; and require constant efforts to sustain managerial support. Practitioners must prove their programs are neither merely virtue signaling nor the Trojan horse of political, legal, or moral pressures that would unsettle the corporate order. Ultimately, by exploring the day-to-day work of diversity managers in the United States and France, Bereni exposes the contradictions lurking beneath the neoliberal promise of harmony between profit and virtue.

Author information:
Laure Bereni is a Research Professor in sociology at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a faculty member of Centre Maurice Halbwachs at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her work lies at the intersection of political sociology, the sociology of gender and race, and the sociology of work and organizations, with a comparative perspective between the United States and France. Her current research focuses on corporate virtue workers and programs – from DEI to environmental sustainability – as part of a broader critical reflection on responsible capitalism.

Availability:
The digital edition is available here and the print version will be released on November 24, 2025. Preorders are available through Oxford University Press with a 30% discount using the code AUFLY30.

Job Posting: Assistant or Associate Professor (tenure track) – UNC Charlotte

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The Department of Sociology and the School of Data Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte invite applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor.

  • Open substantive area, with specialization in advanced data analysis
  • Department of Sociology (and School of Data Science)
  • Position begins: August 2026
  • Application deadline: November 10, 2025

For full details and to apply, please visit the ASA Job Bank posting.

Job Posting: Southern Methodist University (SMU) Invites Applications for an Assistant Professor with Specializations in Economic, Urban, Global, or Transnational Sociology

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The Department of Sociology at Southern Methodist University invites applications for an assistant professor with specializations in economic, urban, global, or transnational sociology, to begin August 1, 2026. The Department of Sociology serves approximately 120 Sociology and Markets and Culture majors and minors; Markets and Culture is an interdisciplinary degree in economic sociology housed within the Department. Applications are due by January 2nd, 2026. For full details, please review the full position description on the ASA career center website, at https://careercenter.asanet.org/job/1311094/assistant-professor-of-sociology-/

The Department of Sociology serves around 120 Sociology and Markets and Culture majors and minors. Markets and Culture is an interdisciplinary economic sociology degree housed in Sociology. Our department is collegial with a strong history of working with McNair Scholars and offering courses that support other majors including African/African-American Studies, Mexican-American Studies, Health & Society, Human Rights and the Women’s and Gender Studies and Law and Legal Reasoning minors. Our faculty contribute to the Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute’s research symposia and take advantage of the opportunities to live on campus in the residential commons as a Faculty-In-Residence and teach during the summer and inter-terms at our sister campus in the mountains of Taos, NM.

SMU is in a transformative period of expansion and momentum. In February, the university met its goal of reaching the R-1 research tier and the recent SMU Ignited fundraising campaign surpassed its goal three years early after raising over $1.6 billion by May 2025. Student applications for Fall 2025 increased 59% over the previous year and we are welcoming our largest incoming cohort in university history. In the past four years, a series of interdisciplinary faculty cluster hires centering on urban studies, data science and high-performance computing, earth hazards and national security, and 21st century technology and education are introducing new collaborations among the faculty across the university and generating innovation in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, a culturally rich arts and global business center that is home to numerous universities, arts organizations and Fortune 500 corporations, and beyond. (https://www.smu.edu/research/key-research-areas)

Minimum Requirements

  • PhD

Preferred Qualifications

  • Ability to contribute courses toward the Markets and Culture major Experience teaching undergraduates preferred

Please address inquiries to Search Committee Chair Matthew Keller (mkeller@smu.edu). Applications must be submitted via Interfolio at https://apply.interfolio.com/171435, and should include a complete curriculum vitae, letter of application, three letters of recommendation, and complete qualitative and quantitative teaching evaluations. SMU is an inclusive and intellectually vibrant community that values diverse research and creative agendas. Review of applications will begin January 2, 2026. To ensure full consideration for the position, the application must be received by January 2, but the committee will continue to accept applications until the position is filled, and notify applicants of the employment decision after the position is filled.

Hiring is contingent upon the satisfactory completion of a background check.

SMU is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, sexual orientation, or gender identity and expression.

Recent Publications from OOW Scholars

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Birced, Elif. 2025. “Empowered by Consumers: How Content Creators Use Relational Labor to Resist Labor Control.” Socio-Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwaf064

Abstract: Researchers often discuss consumers as a means of labor control. In contrast, I ask how workers leverage consumers to resist control over their labor process. Focusing on sponsored content creation as a case, I explain how creators prioritize audience interests to resist sponsors’ control over their creative decisions. Using semi-structured interviews with 39 content creators and observations of a conference session, I show that the managerial practices of sponsoring brands contradict audience expectations due to the relational labor that creators perform to build a sense of community, authenticity, and trustworthiness in the eyes of audiences. Second, I document the role of part-time content creation and YouTube’s paid channel memberships in enhancing creators’ capacity to be selective with sponsorship requests and resist brand interventions that may ultimately lead to a decline in audience engagement. I extend the literature by theorizing when consumers enable workers to resist labor control.

Elif Birced earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Boston University in 2025 and is a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Schwarzman College of Computing during the 2025-26 academic year. 

Carter, Carrie. 2025. “Fight Like a Girl: Fitness Testing as Gendered Organizational Logic in the U.S. Army.” Gender, Work & Organization. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.70048

Abstract: Organizational logics related to excellence and equity are changing rapidly in contemporary workplaces, yet limited research examines the impacts of specific policy initiatives, including why some fail—or even backfire. This study examines one such recent policy case: a temporary period of gender-neutral fitness testing in the United States Army. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews with U.S. soldiers who served during this failed policy change, I examine how the historic and seemingly gender egalitarian practice of sex-normed fitness testing may reinforce inequality in this highly male-dominated organizational context. By comparing soldiers’ narratives about what it takes to be fit for service with the new organizational logics about combat readiness, I highlight how a masculine-typed “ideal soldier” is (a) embedded in the structure of sex-normed fitness standards, (b) reproduced in interactions among soldiers in the process of “doing gender,” and (c) ultimately internalized in soldiers’ evaluations of their own and others’ fitness for service. Findings expand our understanding of how interacting gendering processes may influence workers’ perceptions of organizational change, potentially producing paradoxical outcomes.

Carrie Carter is a sociology Ph.D. candidate at North Carolina State University specializing in gender, work and organizations. Her research explores how organizational policies, practices and culture impact equity and effectiveness, with a particular focus on the U.S. military.

Prechel, Harland, Amber Blazek, and Ernesto F. L. Amaral. 2025. “Toward Theory Consolidation: Stratification, Organizational, and Political-Legal Effects on Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Energy Research & Social Science 128:104330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2025.104330

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to understand the relationship between dimensions of the social structure and greenhouse gas emissions in U.S. fossil fueled electrical power plants. While environmental scholars have made important contributions to understanding society-environmental relations, theoretical growth and therefore the capacity to affect environmental policy is hampered by the lack of integration among different middle range perspectives. To address this issue, we adopt Robert Merton’s observation that theoretical advances require the ‘consolidation of groups of special [middle range] theories.’ We develop a conceptual framework and conduct an empirical analysis that includes core dimensions of the component parts of the social structure. Our geographic information systems analysis shows that electrical energy producing plants are disproportionately located near poor and minority communities. While controlling for physical characteristics of plants, our regression analysis shows that poor communities, region of the U.S. where the plant is located, subnational state environmental policies, ownership of the plant by another corporation, plant size, and the interaction between plant size and subnational state environmental policies all affect greenhouse gas emissions. We present graphs with predicted values from our regression model to illustrate the expected gas emissions, based on values of key independent variables, making complex statistical results more interpretable and meaningful.

Harland Prechel is Professor of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts Cornerstone Fellow, and Energy Institute Fellow at Texas A&M University. His primary areas of research are the corporation, economic sociology, political sociology, and environmental sociology. 

Ernesto F. L. Amaral is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. His research is related to social demography, migration, and public policy analysis. 

New Publication: “Fuzzy Boundaries: A Mechanism for Group Accumulation of Advantage” by Dr. Heba Alex

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Alex, Heba. 2025. “Fuzzy Boundaries: A Mechanism for Group Accumulation of Advantage.” Sociological Theory. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751251378516

Abstract:
This article describes a strategic mechanism, fuzzy boundaries, that groups use to accumulate advantage. In contrast to the dominant view that rigid, well-defined boundaries maximize group rewards, I argue that ambiguity in membership criteria can, under certain conditions, more effectively secure and promote group benefits. Fuzzy boundaries are defined by two features: an intentionally ambiguous criterion for inclusion and the selective, inconsistent application of that criterion to adjust the insider-outsider line as needed. I illustrate the operation of fuzzy boundaries through a historical analysis of occupational boundary drawing in the nineteenth-century United States. Ultimately, the study offers a generalizable framework for understanding how strategic ambiguity in group boundaries can serve actors seeking to preserve privilege across domains, such as education, hiring, and professional accreditation. Unlike well-defined qualifications, the malleability of fuzzy boundaries often insulates them from legal challenge, making them an effective mechanism for maintaining social and institutional advantage.

Dr. Alex is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, and studies topics related to evaluation, differentiation, and morality in diverse institutional contexts such as lower courts, rights, and occupational organizations.

At present, Dr. Alex is developing a book about the moral character clause (being of good moral character) in licensing laws in nineteenth-century America.  You can read an article that emerged from one aspect of this project here. Dr. Alex is also in the early stages of a comparative study examining how the moral clause relates to voting and jury rights during the same period.

Dr. Alex received their Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 2025. Before that, Dr. Alex obtained a B.A. in History from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.A. in Gender and Women’s Studies from UW–Madison. Dr. Alex’s professional journey includes a year at the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York and a Doctoral Fellowship at the American Bar Foundation.