Trinidad, Jose Eos. 2025. Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education. Oxford University Press.
(30% off with code: AUFLY30)
Abstract: In Subtle Webs, Jose Eos Trinidad reveals how organizations outside schools have created an invisible infrastructure not only to affect local school districts but also to shape US education. He illustrates this by providing a behind-the-scenes look at how local organizations in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City have transformed data and worked with high schools to address the problem of students dropping out. The book argues that changes in a decentralized system happen less through top-down policy mandates or bottom-up social movements and more through “outside-in” initiatives of networked organizations spread across various local systems. By detailing change across multiple levels and across multiple locations, Trinidad uncovers new ways to think about educational transformation, policy reform, and organizational change.
Category: Publications
New Publication: “Does Wanting Diversity Mean Racial Diversity? How Race and Gender Influence Support for Corporate DEI Policies.” by Adia Harvey Wingfield & Antonia Roach
Wingfield, Adia Harvey and Antonia Roach. (2025.) “Does Wanting Diversity Mean Racial Diversity? How Race and Gender Influence Support for Corporate DEI Policies.”Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. Online first.
Abstract
In the wake of recent social movements, cultural changes, and emerging organizational norms, decisive majorities of White workers now agree with the premise that companies should strive for workplace diversity. That support rarely translates into an interest in race-conscious programming, yielding what sociologists describe as a “principle/policy gap.” Yet most of the research identifying principle/policy gaps relies on predominantly White samples. In this article, we draw from a sample of 85 Black, White, Asian American, and Latinx workers in the financial sector to examine whether the principle/policy gap is present among both White workers and those of color. Our interviews reveal mixed evidence of principle/policy gaps when it comes to race-based diversity programming. We also find that respondents’ preferences (or lack thereof) for race-conscious diversity are informed by intersections of race and gender, rendering race-based programming more attractive for some groups and gender-based initiatives more appealing for others.
Two New Publications
Hello, here are two new publications from OOW members!
Ghaziani, Amin. 2025. “The Cultural Field of Queer Nightlife: Organizations, Artists, and Curatorial Activism.” The Sociological Quarterly.
ABSTRACT: Queer nightlife is recognized by humanists as an artistic project, while social scientists use it more often as a case to examine deviance and regulatory control, macro-structural inequities, substance use, and sexual violence. In this article, I invite researchers to prioritize culture and creativity in theoretical frameworks of nightlife. Based on 112 interviews about underground parties in London that have arisen as gay bars close, I argue that, more than just an art form, queer nightlife is a cultural field. The conceptual shift from form to field accents the organizational plurality of nightlife, relational artmaking practices, and the aesthetics of activism. While these themes have been described by others—and they are by no means exhaustive—I use them to explain broad associations between art and event-based nightlife scenes in the context of community-level disruptions.
Neeraj Rajasekar, Evan Gunderson, and Annika Wilcox. 2025. “The Language of “Diversity” or “DEI”? Exploring Job Titles of Diversity Professionals in US Institutions of Higher Education.” Sociological Forum. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.13047
ABSTRACT : Diversity discourse and related policy have been common in US higher education, and many such institutions employ diversity professionals. As diversity has historically been a contested concept, the language schools use to articulate diversity can greatly shape the discursive environment and work faced by diversity professionals, especially in the current moment of regular political attacks on diversity and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices in US higher education. This study analyzes the language of diversity in US higher education via analysis of diversity-related job titles. We examine job title data collected from thousands of colleges and universities across the country over an 18-year period, with special attention to educational institutions’ use of “diversity” versus “DEI” terminology. We also analyze how institutional characteristics and contextual factors are associated with language in diversity-related job titles. We find that te language of DEI became substantially more prominent over time, rising steadily from 2015 through 2022. While this may change in the near future, our study illustrates that DEI language had some momentum in American institutions of higher education (IHEs) in the past decade. Notably, schools’ language choice has little association with institutional characteristics or contextual factors, which has implications in a moment where anti-DEI politics and policy are affecting IHEs around the country. We discuss our analysis in the context of the current political-legal landscape and consider directions for future research examining the language of diversity and DEI in US society.
New Publication: “Class identity vs intersectional solidarities: Divergent models for organizing gig workers in Seoul and Toronto” by Youngrong Lee
Lee, Youngrong. (2025). Class identity vs intersectional solidarities: Divergent models for organizing gig workers in Seoul and Toronto. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152241312904
ABSTRACT
Studies indicate that gig workers, one of the leading groups revitalizing labor movements globally, have organized by diverging from traditional union strategies. How do they achieve this in diverse local contexts? Drawing on 21 months of international ethnographic fieldwork with gig workers’ unions in Seoul and Toronto, this article examines how and why these two unions develop different strategies for addressing critical crises. Comparative analysis reveals that while the shared labor process and the multinational parent company drive the unions toward new unionism, different worker subjectivities are emphasized by each union based on specific axes of oppression: working-class citizen men in Seoul and racialized immigrants in Toronto. These union orientations are linked to the unions’ distinct histories, including the biographies of founding members. My argument is twofold. First, to better understand rising gig workers’ organizing efforts around the globe, we must consider both global and local contexts. While gig labor processes push gig workers’ unions to move away from traditional union tactics, two key local factors—the workforce’s demographic makeup and union histories—shape their divergent models. Second, it is critical to understand the process of cultivating solidarity—not only building solidarity itself but also deciding which groups to be in solidarity within the local context.
New Publication: “Sousveillance Work: Monitoring and Managing-Up in Patrimonial Hollywood” by Julia M. Dessauer
Dessauer, J.M. Sousveillance Work: Monitoring and Managing-Up in Patrimonial Hollywood. Qual Sociol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-024-09580-y
Abstract: How do workers come to know what their bosses need and want? This paper shows how laborers in patrimonial work environments learn to serve their bosses through bottom-up observation, rather than top-down instruction. The author uses the case of assistants in Hollywood to introduce the concept of sousveillance work, which is the labor of monitoring, anticipating, and fulfilling a boss’s mutable needs and wants. Drawing on 60 + interviews with professionals in Hollywood, the author reveals how sousveillance work helps assistants manage-up and mitigate volatility wrought by their patrimonial superiors. The concept of sousveillance work adds to research on labor and uncertainty in creative industries, and also helps to reveal how patrimonial systems are sustained in contemporary work environments.
New Publication: “The intergenerational reproduction of self-direction at work: Revisiting Class and Conformity” by Kaspar Burger, Francesca Mele, Monica Johnson, Jeylan Mortimer & Xiaowen Han
Kaspar Burger, Francesca Mele, Monica Johnson, Jeylan Mortimer, and Xiaowen Han. 2025. “The intergenerational reproduction of self-direction at work: Revisiting Class and Conformity.” Social Forces. Online First https://academic.oup.com/sf/advance-article/doi/10.1093/sf/soaf016/7996444?utm_source=advanceaccess&utm_campaign=sf&utm_medium=email
Abstract: In his path-breaking monograph, Class and Conformity, Melvin Kohn reasoned that parents prepare their children for the same conditions of work that they themselves experience. Kohn and his colleagues’ research focused on the influence of parental self-direction at work on parental child-rearing values and practices, as well as the self-directed values of children. The intergenerational transmission of occupational self-direction from parents to the succeeding generation of adult children, strongly implied by Kohn’s analysis, has not been empirically tested. Using two-generation longitudinal data from the Youth Development Study (N = 1139), we estimate a structural equation model to assess the intergenerational continuity of occupational self-direction. We find evidence supporting a key inference of Kohn’s analysis: that self-direction at work, a primary feature of jobs of higher social class standing, is transmitted across generations via self-directed psychological orientations, operationalized here as intrinsic work values. Intrinsic values also significantly predicted second-generation educational attainment, contributing further to the reproduction of socioeconomic inequality. The findings enhance understanding of the intergenerational transmission of advantage.
YDS data are publicly available at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research archive, University of Michigan (ICPSR 24881).
New Publication
Here is a new publication from our OOW section member:
Wilcox, Annika. 2025. “Conforming Critical Diversity: Voicing Diversity for Equity in an Organizational Inequality Regime.” Sociological Focus 58(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/00380237.2024.2433524
ABSTRACT: Diversity is a contested notion: it can be framed “uncritically,” as all differences that benefit privileged groups, or “critically,” as categorical inequalities that must be addressed to advance equity. While uncritical diversity is broadly legitimated, critical diversity is often socially suppressed, particularly in racialized and gendered workplaces. Prior research elucidates how organizational actors advance uncritical (e.g. colorblind) diversity yet pays little attention to how everyday employees voice critical diversity in white-male-dominated work contexts that politicize matters of inequality. I address this concern via analysis of an extreme case: a large, U.S.-based technology company. Drawing on in-depth interviews with employees, I demonstrate that individuals strategically negotiate critical and uncritical meanings of diversity in conversation by conforming critical diversity, which involves (1) defining diversity broadly yet centering categories of inequality, (2) offering critical and uncritical justifications of diversity, and (3) couching critical justifications in individualistic language. These practices uphold status-quo-reproducing diversity narratives while also generating more critical arguments than expected based on prior research. Results suggest the importance of studying how the interactional spaces of organizations and workplaces constrain and enable individuals’ discussions of diversity. If organizations redefined cultural norms governing diversity-related conversations, they might see greater results from formal diversity initiatives.
New Publication: Organizational constraints on campus support programs: A case for former foster care youth
Dominguez, Rachael & Ueno, Koji. (2025, online first). “Organizational constraints on campus support programs: A case for former foster care youth.” Children and Youth Services Review, 168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2024.108036
Abstract: Campus support programs provide targeted services to groups of students throughout their time in college. Some institutions have implemented support programs for former foster care youth, who face lower rates of college retention and graduation than their non-foster peers. These programs must operate within the constraints that colleges and universities impose on them while attempting to maintain program effectiveness. Despite the relevance of the broader university context on campus support program effectiveness, limited studies have examined possible implications of organizational constraints. This study explores organizational constraints and their consequences on campus support programs for former foster care youth. Using an integrated organizational sociology of education framework, we analyzed data from in-depth interviews with 20 program coordinators of campus support programs for former foster care youth across the United States. Results revealed five organizational constraints imposed by the organizational network and structure: limited resource allocation, immobilized information, structural disconnection, conflicting goals, and weak relationships. Our analysis suggests these constraints reinforce each other and undermine program effectiveness. We conclude by discussing the need for additional organizational research on campus support programs, arguing that addressing constraints can lead to a more thorough understanding of their consequences on campus support programs for marginalized student groups.
Free Access by January 17: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1kAvJ_4La8W7-W
New Publication: Work After Lawful Status: Formerly Undocumented Immigrants’ Gendered Relational Legal Consciousness and Workplace Claims-making
Tenorio, Luis Edward. “Work After Lawful Status: Formerly Undocumented Immigrants’ Gendered Relational Legal Consciousness and Workplace Claims-making.” Law & Society Review. 58(3): 383-414. https://doi.org/10.1017/lsr.2024.29
Abstract: Undocumented status impedes immigrants’ workplace claims to legal rights and better treatment. But what happens when they obtain lawful permanent residency – does the reluctance to make claims in the workplace change? If so, how? Drawing on timeline interviews, I examine changes in the relational legal consciousness and reported workplace claims-making of 98 formerly undocumented Latino immigrants. Most respondents reported increased willingness to engage in, and follow through with, workplace claims. However, gendered differences emerged. Men’s claims largely revolved around wage negotiations, moving to a better paying position, and enforcement of legal rights with an attached monetary value. They were also more likely to frame claims as legal rights. In contrast, women’s claims largely revolved around better work treatment, access to job benefits, and workplace accommodations. They were also more likely to frame claims as moral rights. I explain these outcomes as a function of three relational mechanisms: lawful status being understood relative to experiences being undocumented; gendering in the legalization process; and social ties promoting gendered expectations of lawful permanent residency. My findings highlight the importance of gendered differences in relational legal consciousness and how lived reference points (e.g., prior undocumented experience) inform how legal consciousness changes over time.
New Publication: A Moral Dilemma of ‘Selling Out’: Race, Class, and Career Considerations among Elite College Students
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.
Organizations, Occupations and Work 