Jaspers, E., Mazrekaj, D., & Machado, W. (2024). Doing Genders: Partner’s Gender and Labor Market Behavior. American Sociological Review, 89(3), 518-541. https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224241252079
Abstract: Partnered men and women show consistently gendered patterns of labor market behavior. We test whether not only a person’s own gender, but also their partner’s gender shapes hours worked. We use Dutch administrative population data on almost 5,000 persons who had both male and female partners, whose hours worked we observe monthly over 15 years. We argue that this provides a unique setting to assess the relevance of partner’s gender for labor market behavior. Using two-way fixed effects and fixed-effects individual slopes models, we find that both men and women tend to work more hours when partnered with a female partner compared to a male partner. These results align with our hypothesis that a partner’s gender influences labor market behavior. For women, we conclude that this finding may be (partly) explained by marital and motherhood status. Additionally, we discovered that women decrease their hours worked to a lesser extent when caring for a child if they have a female partner. Finally, we found that for men, the positive association between own and partner’s hours worked is weaker when one has a female partner, indicating a higher degree of specialization within these couples.
New Publications
Two new publications:
- 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.
- 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.
Job Postings
There are two job postings listed below.
- Postdoctoral Research Associate for a two-year term, University of Florida
We are hiring a postdoc to join a team of researchers working on a large, NSF-funded project on the sources of rising income inequality in the U.S. The postdoc will contribute to the project by analyzing structural changes in earnings and employment that have contributed to rising economic polarization in the U.S. since 1996. We’ll be working with confidential linked employer-employee data, which we are accessing through a Census Research Data Center at the University of Florida, in Gainesville. We’re looking for someone who has very strong quantitative skills and a background in economic sociology, stratification/inequality, organizational studies, or labor economics.
Additional details are available in the job ad, which is attached, and also available online here.
Some additional highlights include:
- Annual pay of $65,000 per year, plus benefits
- Postdoc will work part time on our project and part time pursuing their own research
- Exciting opportunity to work with protected, hard-to-access data on cutting-edge research
- No teaching duties
If anybody has questions, please reach out enavot@ufl.edu
To apply, please go to this link. We begin reviewing applications after September 30th but we will review applications until the position is filled.
- Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Boston University
The Department of Sociology at Boston University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor to begin July 1, 2025. We seek a colleague with research and teaching interests in economic sociology broadly defined. The successful candidate will contribute to other departmental research strengths, and to undergraduate and graduate teaching in economic sociology and related areas, and should be able to contribute to core theory, methods, or introductory courses.
Boston University expects excellence in teaching and research, and is committed to building a culturally, racially, and ethnically diverse scholarly community. To apply, please submit 1) a cover letter; 2) teaching and research statements no more than two pages each describing your interests and professional experience; 3) a curriculum vitae; 4) three reference letters; and 5) one sample of written work. Submit to Academic Jobs Online. Applications will be reviewed starting October 1, 2024 and continue until the position is filled.
BU conducts a background check on all final candidates for certain faculty and staff positions. The background check includes contacting the final candidate’s current and previous employer(s) to ask whether, in the last seven years, there has been a substantiated finding of misconduct violating that employer’s applicable sexual misconduct policies. To implement this process, the University requires a final candidate to complete and sign the form entitled “Authorization to Release Information” after execution of an offer letter.
Our university community welcomes differences, encourages open-minded exploration, and upholds freedom of expression. We are an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, military service, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, or because of marital, parental, or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We are a VEVRAA Federal Contractor.
Posted on academicjobsonline.com and ASA Job bank (1310223).
For further into http://www.bu.edu/sociology/
Elise St. Esprit stesprit@bu.edu
(617)353-2591
New Publication: “Authoritarian Innovation in the United States: The Role of Dual Subnational Systems of Labor Governance” by Chris Rhomberg
Rhomberg, Chris. 2024. “Authoritarian Innovation in the United States: The Role of Dual Subnational Systems of Labor Governance.” Journal of Industrial Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221856241260770
Abstract: I apply Curato and Fossati’s (2020) concept of “authoritarian innovation” to analyze historic changes in labor governance in the United States that have undermined democratic participation in the workplace and in the polity. Drawing from comparative political economy and welfare state theories, I argue that since the 1930s the U.S. has had not one unified, national labor regime but two competing, subnational regimes: the New Deal and its legacy in the industrialized North and West Coast and a counter-regime based initially in the former Confederate Southern states. The more anti-union, anti-welfare, and anti-democratic Southern regime survived the Civil Rights era of the 1960s and 1970s, gained ascendance nationally with the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s, and expanded its boundaries in the 2010s into the deindustrialized Midwest. The “dual regime” analysis highlights critical transitions and divergent paths in the reshaping of American democracy.
New Book: From Skepticism to Competence: How American Psychiatrists Learn Psychotherapy by Mariana Craciun
Craciun, Mariana. 2024. From Skepticism to Competence: How American Psychiatrists Learn Psychotherapy. University of Chicago Press.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo215859800.html
While many medical professionals can physically examine the body to identify and understand its troubles—a cardiologist can take a scan of the heart, an endocrinologist can measure hormone levels, an oncologist can locate a tumor—psychiatrists have a much harder time unlocking the inner workings of the brain or its metaphysical counterpart, the mind.
In From Skepticism to Competence, sociologist Mariana Craciun delves into the radical uncertainty of psychiatric work by following medical residents in the field as they learn about psychotherapeutic methods. Most are skeptical at the start. While they are well equipped to treat brain diseases through prescription drugs, they must set their expectations aside and learn how to navigate their patients’ minds. Their instructors, experienced psychotherapists, help the budding psychiatrists navigate this new professional terrain by revealing the inner workings of talk and behavioral interventions and stressing their utility in a world dominated by pharmaceutical treatments. In the process, the residents examine their own doctoring assumptions and develop new competencies in psychotherapy. Exploring the world of contemporary psychiatric training, Craciun illuminates novice physicians’ struggles to understand the nature and meaning of mental illness and, with it, their own growing medical expertise.
Michigan Stone Center Call for Visiting Fellow Applications
The Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics (CID) at the University of Michigan is now accepting applications for a Visiting Fellow for the 2025-26 academic year. CID aims to produce cutting-edge research on social inequality, especially wealth inequality, train the next generation of inequality scholars, build data infrastructure, and increase data accessibility. The fellowship provides an early-career, tenure-track social scientist studying social inequality with funded time to pursue their research in an intellectual community defined by a culture of engagement and collaboration.
Notably, we are committed to making this support equitably available to scholars, regardless of whether they are able to relocate to Ann Arbor for the year. Thus, we offer both a nonresidential and a residential option.
To learn more and apply, visit https://inequality.umich.edu/cid-visiting-fellowship/
Applications are due October 15.
Call For Participants
Many of you are familiar with the Online College Social Life Survey (OCSLS) started by Paula England which has been used to study college hooking up, dating and relationships by many sociologists. Recently a team of researchers (Jennifer Lundquist, Celeste Curington, Arielle Kuperberg and Lisa Wade) have updated the survey, and are currently collecting a second wave of the survey.
We are now trying to find additional professors who are willing to give the survey as an extra credit assignment in their courses this Fall or Spring and then for a few years afterwards. We are also seeking survey participation from underrepresented universities such as HBCUs, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and community colleges.
If you are interested or could recommend a colleague who may be interested in hosting the survey in a class next year, please email me (ccuringt@bu.edu) and cc our amazing Research assistant, Ruby Haws (ocslsurvey@gmail.com).
Keep reading below for details, including links for lecture-discussion slides and assignments that you are welcome to use in tandem with having your students fill out the survey.
OCSLS2.0 New Wave of Data Collection
Background
The Online College Social Life Survey (OCSLS) was originally designed by Paula England and collected between 2005 and 2011 at 21 colleges and universities, measuring sexual history and attitudes regarding dating, hooking up, and relationships. Since then, she has freely shared the data with anyone who has asked. The data set has resulted in many publications from many people studying college partnering. I’m excited to announce that we have made changes to this survey for a new phase of data collection, one that will collect new data about online dating and will draw from a more diverse population. We are calling it OCSLS2.0.
The data from OCSLS has proven to be a great resource for faculty and student researchers who have interests in the area of sex and gender, intimate relationships, public health, college student life and sexual violence. It is also an especially interesting dataset to students, and, as such, faculty often assign exercises using the dataset in stats and research courses. It has resulted in impactful publications and is regularly cited in press outlets such as The Conversation, The Atlantic, the NY TImes and in journalist Peggy Orenstein’s NY Times bestselling book Girls & Sex. Most importantly, any researcher may use the data that is collected from this survey. This is what makes this project so important and valuable. Currently, UMASS-Amherst is the IRB of record (under the direction of Dr. Celeste Curington and Dr. Jennifer Lundquist).
What are the current data collection efforts?
We have already gone through IRB approval. We ask that faculty distribute the survey to their students (larger classes are better) and follow the approved steps for recruitment: we will provide faculty with an approved blurb that they can distribute to their class and/or include on their course syllabus and we also ask that faculty provide extra credit to students (not to exceed 2% of their final grade). We also require that an alternative extra credit assignment is offered to students who do not wish to participate (our experience is that very few will ask for this).
How do I get started?
If you are interested or could recommend a colleague who may be interested in hosting the survey in a class next year, please email me (ccuringt@bu.edu) and cc our amazing Research assistant, Ruby Haws (ocslsurvey@gmail.com).
For your information, the UMass IRB contact is Jorge Guzman at 413-545 5207, jaguzman@research.umass.edu.
What is the process like to start up the survey at your college/university?
The good news is that most of the other participating colleges and universities (where faculty have agreed to share the survey link with their students) were not required by their IRB Office to submit a protocol or a reliance agreement, since the partners are not recruiting participants, aside from inviting their class to fill out the survey outside of class, and do not have access to the students’ responses or data.
There is also no cost. Participating faculty will give students who take the survey outside of class extra credit (at no more than 2% points) and also provide an alternative assignment for extra credit if they prefer, though there is no requirement that students participate at all. The survey takes 30 minutes.
Accompanying Classroom Activities
Click on this access link for:
1. Sample description of assignment that can be used in a class announcement of the survey or added to your syllabus
2. Slides that you are welcome to adapt to your class
· Please note that the slides are a bit texty, so you may want to spiff them up a bit. If you decide to teach on the topic, it is best to show it to them after they have taken the survey so that it doesn’t bias how they go into the survey.
· Alternatively, you can refer to Lisa Wade’s excellent slides, the format of which inspired these slides: https://lisawadedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/wade-pp-the-promise-and-peril-of-hook-up-culture.pdf
Lundquist’s and Curington’s article about this effort in Contexts (best for students to read after they have taken survey)
A member of our research team, Arielle Kuperberg, often uses it in her data analysis course on survey design and also in her family course on research methods.
She pairs a youtube video by Paula England about many of the findings her report + leads a discussion on how they think trends will have changed in the new wave of data.
Call For Proposals: SASE 2025 Mini-Conferences
Call for Proposals
Inclusive Solidarities: Reimagining Boundaries in Divided Times
37th Annual SASE Conference Palais des Congrès, Montréal, Québec
9-12 July 2025
The Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) will hold its 37th annual meeting July 9-12, 2025 at the Palais des Congrès in Montréal. SASE is currently accepting proposals for Mini-Conference themes. Mini-conferences operate as separate theme tracks in the program, and are typically composed of 4-8 panels. They are included in the general call for submissions which will open in the fall of 2024. More information on this call can be found here. The mini-conferences from the 2024 conference are listed here, by way of example.
Proposals for mini-conference themes are due by the 16th of September. General submissions will open shortly thereafter, with a deadline of December 16th. Should you have questions about mini-conferences or the application procedure, please reach out to SASE Executive Director Annelies Fryberger, saseexecutive@sase.org.
Call for Abstracts : ISA 2025
ISA Forum of Sociology 2025 – Call for Abstracts
Vth ISA Forum of Sociology
Rabat, Morocco
July 6 – 11, 2025
Deadline for submissions (max 300 words): October 15, 2024
We are delighted to invite you to submit your abstracts for Vth ISA Forum of Sociology. The ISA Forum of Sociology of the International Sociological Association offers a unique opportunity to discuss current research with a global scholarship.
The Research Committee on Sociology of Organizations (RC17) calls for submissions. All streams accept submissions in English, many also in French and Spanish (live translation into English subtitles will be provided!).
Link: https://organizational-sociology.com/isa-forum-of-sociology-2025-call-for-abstracts
New Books
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.
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
Organizations, Occupations and Work 