Subject to Evaluation: How Parents Assess and Mobilize Information from Social Networks in School Choice

A rich literature examines how information spreads through social networks to influence life opportunities. However, receiving information does not guarantee its use in decision making. This article analyzes information evaluation as a fundamental component of social network mobilization. The case of school choice, where the value of information may be more uncertain, brings this evaluative dimension to the forefront. Interviews with 55 parents in Boston show how parents selecting schools assess their social network ties as information sources, privileging information from those they perceive to have affinity and authority. These evaluative criteria map onto disparate networks to engender unequal mobilization of this information. The findings illuminate mechanisms sustaining inequality in social network mobilization and reorient scholars to consider processes underlying information use alongside information diffusion to attain a more complete understanding of how network resources are mobilized in action.     

Learning from the Religious Experiences of Bi+ Trans People

This article builds upon emerging studies of bi+ and trans populations to explore the importance of expanding studies of religion and nonreligion beyond an almost entirely cisgender and monosexual focus. Specifically, we utilize the largest qualitative sample of bi+ trans people (n = 249) in sociology to date to explore the ways people in both these populations experience religion. We find that while some bi+ trans people note exceptional positive experiences in religious contexts, they almost entirely experience religion as a source of damnation and trauma. Our analysis speaks to sociologies of (1) gender and (non)religion, (2) sexualities and (non)religion, and (3) (non)religious bi+ and/or trans experience. Our conclusion outlines implications for developing bi+ and trans inclusive studies of religion and nonreligion.     

Tip Work: Examining the Relational Dynamics of Tipping beyond the Service Counter

Tips constitute a growing form of income for roughly three million American workers today. While existing scholarship on tipping focuses on worker‐customer dynamics, it neglects the implications of gratuities beyond the service counter. Drawing on the case of restaurant workers in Los Angeles, this study analyzes tip work, the bundle of social relations and labor experiences framed by tips in commercial settings. I argue that tipping strains relations between subgroups of workers who, despite collectively producing service, are subject to unequal access to tip earnings. Tips thereby shape relations among workers in ways that exacerbate existing organizational and social hierarchies.     

Global development and precarity: a critical political analysis

ABSTRACT

Precarity as a concept has come to be conceived as a distinctive experience of neoliberal development, especially in the European context. The experience of precarity, according to some, has influenced efforts aimed at living otherwise from the precepts of neoliberal development. Yet, for others, precarity is producing a ‘new dangerous class’. However, despite different perspectives of the effects and implications of precarity, the analytical purchase and political utility of the concept has received insufficient attention. In this article, we hope to contribute to critical debates on the limitations of ‘precarity’ as a concept for critical political analysis. We argue that in the dominant use of precarity as an analytic of inequality, particular experiences are rendered as historical universals. Consequently, these (particular) experiences are disconnected from global social and political relations of inequality, while at the same time reinforcing a linear and reductionist conception of development. We demonstrate that the temporal scheme represented by the notion of the ‘age of post-Fordism’, which serves as a crucial marker of the explanatory framework of precarity (in Europe), actually misconstrues the politics of global development through inequalities. Moreover, the tendency to focus on subjectification as conditioning the formation of a ‘new’ dangerous class, entails far-reaching omissions of actual transnational political struggles against domination and inequality. Instead of precarity, a critical engagement with the politics of global development ought to be the subject of analysis for understanding contested relations of affluence, insecurity and inequality.     

代际累积与子代住房资源获得的不平等:基于广州的个案分析

本文通过"代际累积"概念探讨了父代住房支持的差异引发的子代住房不平等问题。参考以往通过"优势累积/劣势累积"两条因果路径分析社会不平等的方法和最新文献对累积过程的关注,本研究将弥补以往累积与社会不平等研究忽视代际分析的不足,从因果机制和过程分析两方面推进代际累积对住房不平等的解释。对前者的研究发现,住房制度改革拓宽了个体住房资源获得的渠道,父代家庭对子代的住房支持从无到有、由小变大,其对住房不平等的影响也日渐凸显;对后者的研究表明,代际累积这一因果机制所解释的住房不平等并非稳定不变的,受一些因素的影响,既有累积趋势可能会发生异于原初累积方向的变动,甚至是累积断裂。这一发现弥补了代际优势/劣势累积这一因果机制未能澄清累积过程中波动存在的理论缺憾。     

From institutional segmentation to market fragmentation: Institutional transformation and the shifting stratification order in urban China

Focusing on the changing roles of organizations, this study develops an institutional framework to examine the shifting stratification order since the mid-1990s in urban China. We argue that, after the mid-1990s, the Chinese state led a dual process of institutional transformation. On the one hand, the state dismantled the socialist redistributive system and broke down institutional segmentation based on organizational ownership and bureaucratic rank. On the other hand, the state developed different markets with various paces and strategies, resulting in fragmented market environments. In this context, reformed organizations interacted with heterogeneous market conditions to exert different impacts on multiple dimensions of social inequality. We draw empirical evidence from two national survey data collected in 1994 and 2003 during a critical period. Our findings show that the foundation of the stratification order has shifted from institutional segmentation to market fragmentation in urban China. This study calls for substantive institutional analysis to better understand the intricate landscape of social inequality in transitional economies.     

Why Do(n't) they leave?: Motherhood and women's job mobility

Although the relationship between motherhood and women's labor market exits has received a great deal of popular and empirical attention in recent years, far less is known about the relationship between motherhood and women's job changes. In this paper, I use panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979) (NLSY79) and Cox regression models to examine how motherhood influences the types of job changes and employment exits women make and how this varies by racial-ethnic group. I find preschool-age children are largely immobilizing for white women, as they discourage these women from making the types of voluntary job changes that are often associated with wage growth. No such effects were found for Black or Hispanic women.     

Transnational mobility among early-career academics: gendered aspects of negotiations and arrangements within heterosexual couples

ABSTRACT

Today, transnational mobility is often presented as indispensable for a successful academic career. This institutionalisation of transnational mobility for young academics has important effects in (re)producing or transforming gender inequalities. Building on the results of a qualitative study conducted at three universities – Zurich (Switzerland), UCLA (U.S.A), and Cambridge (UK) – this paper examines the mobility experiences of early-career academics and their partners and seeks to understand the gendered mechanisms underlying mobility patterns. Drawing on three case studies, this paper focuses on the negotiations and arrangements of mobile couples. Each case study represents a different ideal-typical pattern of how gender is entangled with mobility. We show how gender is ‘done’ and ‘undone’ by the academics and their partners throughout these mobility trajectories, and how these couples’ negotiations and practices are closely entangled with gender representations that are structurally anchored in labour markets and discursively expressed within the wider social environment. As such, this paper questions the dichotomy between economic men and social and cultural women sometimes reproduced in studies on highly skilled migration. Furthermore, the findings challenge earlier studies that suggest a causal link between mobility and the leaky pipeline by showing that important transformations with regard to gender relations are occurring.     

The rise of the second generation: aspirations,motivations and academic success of Chinese immigrants’ children in Hong Kong

The second-generation immigrants’ advantage in education has been observed in many destination countries, and often explained in terms of their family values and practices embedded with certain culture and positive selection on psychological factors. However, the roles of culture and selectivity have been hardly disentangled from each other. In this article, we examine the self-selection hypothesis in the context of Hong Kong, as its unique setting enables us to largely control for the effect of cultural factors and focus on the positive selection effect. We identify four psychological traits that could contribute to immigrants’ outstanding performance, and employ mediation analysis to investigate how much of the effect of immigrant status on academic achievement is mediated through these factors. Analysis of data from the Programme for International Student Assessment in Hong Kong reveals that, having strong motivations to find a better life and high aspirations for upward mobility can largely explain Chinese immigrant children’s academic success in Hong Kong, with educational aspiration playing a particularly important role. In addition, the net academic advantage of second-generation immigrants is larger among low socio-economic status (SES) families, and low SES immigrant parents have exceptionally high expectation and great dedication to their children’s education.