Developing a Syllabus for a Mixed‐Methods Research Course

In this paper, the author shares with readers his journey towards creating and evaluating a mixed‐methods research course in education using a course design framework to guide the discussion. He discusses important questions such as what goes into a mixed‐methods syllabus, what resources are available to instructors and students, what learning goals we might set for our students and how we might assess whether students achieve these goals in the context of teaching his own course for the first time. There is a need for dialogue among the ‘first generation’ of instructors of mixed‐methods research courses about how we teach these courses – readers are encouraged to continue this dialogue about teaching mixed‐methods research courses by following up on and extending the ideas in this paper.     

Gender‐Related Opportunities and Turnover: The Case of Medical Sector Employees

This study examined the relationships between gender, objective and perceived work‐related opportunities, and turnover behavior. This was achieved using an interdisciplinary approach that combined the macro‐level perspective on opportunities in internal and external labor markets, with the micro‐level perspective of individual perceptions of opportunities. The results revealed that the opportunities–turnover linkage is gender‐specific rather than gender‐neutral. Women's turnover behavior was affected by their ‘perception’ of employment opportunities in the organizational and local labor markets. By contrast, men's turnover behavior was affected by ‘objective’, organizational and local labor market conditions. These findings indicate that the objective opportunities of the work market may be compatible with men’s, but not women’s, work needs and hence question existing assumptions of a ‘gender‐neutral’ effect of opportunities on turnover decisions.     

After Postnational Citizenship: Constructing the Boundaries of Inclusion in Neoliberal Contexts

Profound changes in global exchanges of goods, ideas, and labor in the 20th century required scholars to critically engage with notions of citizenship, belonging and inclusion. Scholars of globalization initially posited the development of a postnational citizenship, wherein rights are attached to individuals as human beings rather than as members of particular nation‐states. This article questions these theories in light of the evolution of neoliberalism in global markets and the worsening problems of the displaced and rightless. We show that, with the prioritization of market participation as a condition of full inclusion, personhood is not sufficient for belonging or claims‐making. We highlight the effects of the new ‘market citizenship’ on both migrant groups and native‐born minorities, whose inclusion is increasingly based on economic success rather than legal citizenship. We consider the literature on the ways that neoliberalism builds upon historical economic inequalities to distribute citizenship rights to those individuals deemed productive within the current economic system. Finally, we demonstrate that the current citizenship regime, while not anchored in the nation‐state, is very different from early formulations of postnational citizenship. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Impact of Labor Market Structure on Sex Differences in Earnings

This research examines how structural features of a labor market affect the size of the male-female earnings differential in that market. Theoretical predictions are tested using data on the earnings of male and female academics in the US. Measures of labor market structure are shown to be significantly associated with the size of the earnings differential in 56 labor markets corresponding to specific academic disciplines. As predicted, an oversupply of labor within a market and greater career embeddedness in a single organization within a market increased the size of the earnings gap between men and women. Contrary to predictions, greater flows of information in the market and market permeability had no impact on the size of the earnings differential within markets. In addition, higher percentages of women in the market decreased the wage differential within markets. Additional analysis at the individual level found that men were penalized less than women when labor market conditions led to lower wages. Findings generally support the theoretical position that structural characteristics of the labor market affect the ability of employers to engage in salary discrimination against women.     

Poor People in Poor Places: Local Opportunity Structures and Household Poverty*

Abstract Accounts of poverty generally fall into either “individualist” or “structuralist” camps. Often these are seen as irreconcilable and incompatible competing perspectives. This paper integrates individualist and structuralist accounts of poverty by examining the relationship between “person poverty” and “place poverty” in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan labor markets, using a multilevel framework. I fashion a general model of poverty production and allocation, drawing on the labor market ecology perspective. After a discussion of this perspective, I develop a multilevel framework for analyzing data from the 1990 Census PUMS‐L sample, STF‐3c, and other sources to show how compositional and contextual factors affect households' likelihoods of being in poverty. These multilevel models also allow us to estimate the degree to which labor market conditions influence the magnitude of household labor supply characteristics. Results suggest that both compositional and contextual factors contribute to the metro‐nonmetro difference in poverty rates, and that the effects of employment vary in accordance with labor market characteristics.     

The Continuing Significance of Race in the Occupational Attainment of Whites and Blacks: A Segmented Labor Market Analysis*

In this article we posit that racial discrimination is not uniform across the U.S. labor market. While it is likely that patterns of racial discrimination occur in some types of jobs more than others, little empirical research has examined the effect of race across segmented labor markets. Incorporating two decades of comparable General Social Survey data, this article revisits William J. Wilson's hypothesis that the significance of race in determining labor market outcomes is declining. We examine the effect of race within two dissimilar labor segments over time, dividing the labor market into technique‐versus social‐skills‐oriented segments. Using this theoretically useful dichotomy, we examine if the net effect of race (African American and white men) on occupational prestige has declined from the 1970s to the 1990s. Our multivariate analysis shows that the net effect of race is different in each labor market. This suggests that racial discrimination against African Americans is not uniform across the entire labor market, but instead is differentiately manifested within various labor market segments. Overall, our findings partially support Wilson's thesis indicating that while the effect of race is no longer a significant indicator of occupational prestige by the 1990s in a technique‐oriented job segment, it remains a significant predictive variable within a social‐skills‐oriented job segment, even when controlling for a range of social class and structural variables.     

The Fragile Families study: social policies and labor markets in seven cities

An analysis of the welfare, child support, and labor market environments in the first seven Fragile Families cities confirms that, as intended, these cities represent the extremes in terms of their social policies and labor markets. Studying families in cities with extreme environments—generous or stingy welfare policies, strict or lenient child support enforcement, tight or slack labor markets—will allow us to better understand how policies and labor markets interact to affect the living arrangements and wellbeing of families. Based on our theoretical framework, we expect to find more marriage and cohabitation in cities with stingy welfare benefits and policies, strict child support enforcement, and strong labor markets. In contrast, we expect less marriage and cohabitation in cities with generous and accessible welfare benefits, weak child support enforcement, and weak labor markets. In future papers, Fragile Families data in twenty cities will be brought to bear on these predictions.     

Municipal residency laws: Effects on police employment,compensation, and productivity

This paper offers an alternative model of the effects of residency laws in municipal labor markets. Unlike previous studies, the model assumes that public employee labor markets are characterized by conditions of excess supply and that public services are produced under noncompetitive conditions. The model also implies that productivity improvements increase rather than reduce labor demand, yielding different results with respect to the wage and employment effects of residency requirements. The non-clearing market model is tested using data on municipal police officers. The results are more compatible with the disequilibrium model than with models based on a competitive equilibrium.     

Supporting Critical Multicultural Teacher Educators: Transformative teaching,social justice education,and perceptions of institutional support

ABSTRACT

In most teacher education programmes in Canada and the United States, educators’ opportunities to develop equity-related skills are concentrated into single ‘multicultural’ courses. These courses tend to have a conservative or liberal orientation, focused on appreciating diversity or cultural competence, rather than a critical orientation, focused on preparing teachers to address inequity. In this study, based on a survey of instructors of multicultural and intercultural teacher education courses in Canada and the US (N = 186), we examined the relationship between the criticality of their multicultural teacher education courses and their perceptions of institutional support for the values they teach. We found a negative relationship between the two – the more critical the instructors’ approaches, the less institutional support they perceived.     

What Happens to Defined Contribution Accounts When Labor Markets and Financial Markets Move Together?

The relationship among earnings, savings, and retirement is well known; however, the linkage between labor market outcomes and financial market performance is generally unacknowledged. We examine the implications of the link between labor markets and financial markets for workers who save money in individual retirement accounts. Specifically, differences in labor market outcomes across groups may imply differences in the timing of investments, which may reduce savings over time for these groups compared to their counterparts. Using monthly data from the Current Population Survey (1979–2002), we generate hypothetical investment portfolios using stock and bond indices. We exploit differences across demographic groups in unemployment and wage growth and use these differences to examine each group's investment outcomes. We then disaggregate the total effects into short-term and long-term components. We find some evidence of short-term market timing effects on investment, but we find much larger long-term effects for some groups. Our findings suggest that, for many people, the retirement savings losses associated with the timing of markets are similar to the costs of annuitizing savings upon retirement. The differences are especially pronounced by education and gender.     

Land Tenure Legacies,Household Life Cycles,and Livelihood Strategies in Upland China

Land tenure regimes shape how households use labor and other resources to construct livelihoods. Within a given tenure regime, shifting land‐labor relationships over the household life cycle present households with changing trade‐offs. In China, alongside growing market exchange of labor and produce, the legacies of land distribution following decollectivization—in particular, secure access to land and constraints on land transfers—create distinct patterns connecting livelihood strategies to household life cycles. Drawing on a household survey conducted in upland southwest China, we use latent class analysis to identify clusters of households with differing livelihood strategies. With multinomial logistic regression analyses, we evaluate the effects of household demographic composition, household resources, and community human ecological attributes on cluster membership. Households that had recently been established at the time of decollectivization have not divided their holdings. Their large labor and land endowments support diversifying strategies that include relatively large scale farming. Among other households, partitioning has yielded middle‐sized households with diversifying strategies and small households that specialize in on‐farm production or deactivate from agriculture. These clusters vary in labor exchange practices and agricultural input use. Rather than a cyclical pattern, this configuration reflects time‐bound relationships among national tenure institutions, local markets, and household processes.     

The reflective diary: an experiential tool for enhancing social work students’ research learning

There has been substantial discussion internationally about the need for social work students to integrate research into practice. Little has been written, however, about teaching methods that address the cognitive and emotional challenges students experience in their efforts to develop research competencies. Many students believe that research does not apply to the ‘real’ world of practice and are anxious and fearful when they begin a research course. Using a retrospective review of students’ assignments, this article describes the use of reflective diaries in teaching MSW students from a university in the USA skills for practice-based social work research. Reflective diaries provide a safe forum for students to actively engage with the challenges they experience while taking a research course and take ownership of their learning needs. The diary entries provide instructors with windows into their students’ learning processes that enable them to create scaffolding opportunities that support students in developing confidence in their research skills. This article describes the pedagogical philosophy behind reflective diaries, details of the diaries assignment, and benefits of this learning tool for students and instructors. The authors offer recommendations for incorporating reflective diaries into social work research courses and implications for evidence-based practice.     

Uncompensated emotional labor,racial battle fatigue,and (in)civility in digital spaces

Emotional labor was originally theorized by Arlie Hochschild in the context of domestic labor. Since her early theorization, popular culture and social scientists have adopted the term to refer to emotion work that is exhibited in a manner of financially compensated social settings. Emotional labor refers to the process by which individuals are expected to conform to a set of societal guidelines, ensuring that their emotions conform to that performance. As the use of social media grows, emotional labor plays an increasing role in the lives of people of color—across media platforms. We frame the ever‐present negotiation involved in racialized interactions online as a type of uncompensated emotional labor that results in racial battle fatigue. Next, we position emotional labor as an intrinsic part of the experience for social media users of color because digital media is by default a White, racialized space. Lastly, we argue that current research on civility does not account for the emotional labor of people of color. We offer an original view of uncompensated emotional labor that is inclusive of cross‐platform, racialized emotional labor that can result in racial battle fatigue.     

LABOR SUPPLY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MARRIED HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN AND PARTNERED LESBIANS: A SEMI‐PARAMETRIC DECOMPOSITION APPROACH

Using 2000 U.S. Census data we illustrate the importance of accounting for household specialization in lesbian couples when examining labor supply differences between heterosexual married and partnered lesbian women. Specifically, we find the labor supply gap is substantially larger between married women and partnered lesbian women who specialize in market production (primary earners) than between married women and partnered lesbian women who specialize in household production (secondary earners). Applying a semi‐parametric decomposition approach we show that controlling for children significantly reduces the gap between married women and secondary lesbian earners both in terms of the decision to remain attached to the labor market (the extensive margin) and annual hours of work conditional on working (the intensive margin). Further, the effect of controlling for children primarily reduces the percentage of secondary lesbian earners working extremely high annual hours. (JEL J15, J16, J22)     

EFFICIENCY WAGES AND SUBJECTIVE PERFORMANCE PAY

This paper studies optimal relational contracts in motivating workers in a market setting. We find that labor markets with higher turnover costs will use more subjective performance pay and less efficiency wages and that in those markets, the total wage payment is lower and the equilibrium employment level is higher. Surprisingly, under certain conditions, an increase in turnover costs leads to higher social welfare. Incorporating workers' search costs, we show that wages are procyclical in booms and are either rigid or countercyclical during recessions. The predictions of the model are consistent with some empirical evidence. ( JEL D82, J33, J41, J63)     

Sailing together from different shores: labour markets and inequality on board merchant ships

In this study, we analyse the consequences of the conditions of the labour‐market contracts for working on board merchant ships. More specifically, we examine how seafarers hired on different contracts work together. Seafarers’ conditions of work differ considerably: some, mainly workers in the West, have permanent contracts with a shipping company, are paid a relatively high monthly wage and can go ashore every second month, whereas others performing the same tasks may have to stay at sea for more than six months at a time, and work for less money on temporary contracts. Drawing on the economic sociology of markets and institutional theory, in this article we present the institutional conditions of globalized labour markets for seafarers and analyse unique data derived from observations and interviews on board merchant ships. We argue that the notion of market is a key explanatory factor for how the work is conducted on board. Theoretically, our elaboration on markets allows us to conceptualize and address global and transnational markets.     

Global Changes and Gendered Responses: The Feminization of Migration From Georgia

While frequently discussed, the feminization of migration remains among the least understood trends in migration literature. Existing research links feminization of migration to socioeconomic change in migrant origin countries, changes in destination‐country labor markets, structural factors, and changing social attitudes. However, questions of how the feminization of migration begins and how it becomes socially institutionalized remain largely unanswered. Having experienced a recent, dramatic increase in female migration, Georgia provides an excellent case to study the emergence of women's labor migration. Our findings highlight the importance of human capital, increasing divorce rates, and an absence of local economic opportunities in motivating increasing numbers of women to migrate. Additionally, changing destination patterns and shifts in labor‐market demand toward feminized occupations act as key initial conditions enabling the growth of women's migration. As migration is feminized, cultural beliefs stigmatizing female migrants can be renegotiated to frame women's migration within normative gender approaches, providing pathways for cultural maintenance. In the early stages of the feminization of migration, we find the initial attempts to reframe migration are powerful; they can challenge, or at least delay, the expansion of women's autonomy that is often associated with migration.     

Marriage‐Market Constraints and Mate‐Selection Behavior: Racial,Ethnic, and Gender Differences in Intermarriage

Despite theoretical consensus that marriage markets constrain mate‐selection behavior, few studies directly evaluate how local marriage‐market conditions influence intermarriage patterns. Using data from the American Community Survey, the authors examine what aspects of marriage markets influence mate selection, assess whether the associations between marriage‐market conditions and intermarriage are uniform by gender and across pan‐ethnic groups, and investigate the extent to which marriage‐market conditions account for group differences in intermarriage patterns. Relative group size is the most salient and consistent determinant of intermarriage patterns across pan‐ethnic groups and by gender. Marriage‐market constraints typically explain a larger share of pan‐ethnic differences in intermarriage rates than individual traits, suggesting that scarcity of co‐ethnic partners is a key reason behind decisions to intermarry. When faced with market constraints, men are more willing or more successful than women in crossing racial and ethnic boundaries in marriage.     

Labor Market Impact of Migration: Employment Structures and the Case of Greece1

The impact of migration on the labor markets of host countries has fueled research and policy debates. While the impact of migration on the employment opportunities and wages of natives has come under extensive focus, another dimension of labor market impact of migration apparent in the case of Greece, the relations under which work is performed, has attracted less attention. The prevalence of family‐based forms of production and the relatively limited extent of waged employment have log made Greece an outlier with respect to European employment structures. However, much of the work previously carried out within the framework of the family is now undertaken by migrants for wages. This substitution of unpaid family labor by migrant wage‐labor is contributing to the convergence of Greek employment structures with those of other countries of the European Union.     

Monopsony and teachers’ salaries in Georgia

Does monopsony power in the labor market for teachers affect teachers’ salaries? Prior studies have found mixed evidence of monopsony effects in teacher labor markets. A major problem has been controlling for union wage effects, which potentially mask the wage-depressing effects of monopsony. We use data from the state of Georgia, one of the few states in the United States where no teacher bargaining takes place. We detect no evidence of lower average teacher salaries in less competitive labor markets. We also find limited evidence that salaries of beginning teachers may be about two percent lower in less competitive labor markets, but our findings are not robust with respect to our various measures of monopsony and labor market boundaries. We conclude that even in the absence of unions the effect of monopsony on teachers’ salaries appears to be very small.