by John Lever

We often see only what we want to see, and what we want to see is often conditioned by what we learn to see as members of society. What we don’t see in this sense is the high dependency of the food and meat-processing sector on migrant labour.

Indeed without migrants working in the sector it would be difficult for companies to meet fluctuating market demand and get food to supermarkets at an affordable (if increasingly unsustainable) price.

These were some of the findings from a recently published study I conducted with the geographer Paul Milbourne on migrant labour in the meat-processing sector in Wales in the UK. We found that migrants are an invisible part of the workforce.

Specifically, we found that the industry is characterized by employment practices and working conditions that set workers against each other in a competitive spiral of self-exploitation. This situation occurs in the tightly defined occupational spaces of the factory floor, where migrants are employed in positions (boning, freezing, preserving and packing meat) that are renowned for being dirty, dangerous and demanding.

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by Elad N. Sherf and Subra Tangirala 

A gender-balanced workforce is an economic and moral imperative for organizations. Advancing women’s equality is not only right from a social justice perspective but as a recent report by McKinsey Global Institute suggests it can add $12 trillion to global economic growth. Not surprisingly, many organizations have launched gender-parity initiatives or organized attempts to improve the balance of the gender make-up of their workforces.

Yet, such gender-parity initiatives frequently fail to meet their desired objectives. Although multiple reasons potentially contribute to such failures, one crucial reason may be men’s passivity or lack of enthusiastic involvement in those initiatives.

When men stay on the sidelines, a critical stakeholder is left out of conversations on how organizations can approach and implement gender-equitable policies and practices. That is, gender-parity initiatives run the risk of getting marginalized as “women’s issues” that fail to capture and mobilize the attention and resources of all members of the organization. As men are frequently in positions of power and authority, their lower involvement can thus especially contribute to gender-parity initiatives’ lack of success.

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by Jeremy R. Levine

In May of 2013, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) hosted a public meeting in the low-income neighborhood of Upham’s Corner. The purpose was to solicit input about bike lanes, traffic congestion, and other transportation issues. The meeting resembled similar rituals of participatory democracy that have become increasingly common in poor neighborhoods across the United States: Residents came together with policymakers and collectively debated an issue of public importance.

In theory, participation enables democracy and empowers citizens by incorporating their unique knowledge into public decision-making. But in practice, participation can fall short of these lofty goals.

At the meeting in Upham’s Corner, a transportation consultant contracted by the BRA presented plans to consolidate two bus stops in the neighborhood. The state transportation authority had already committed to the consolidation; the consultant was just explaining the change as background context for her additional recommendations.

Residents at the meeting were both unaware of and upset at the news. Cedric, an African American resident in his forties, argued that the bus stops were important for “this community.”  The consultant responded that a “robust public participation process” had already occurred, and during that process, “people were invited to submit comments.” There were public meetings, she claimed, “and this was ultimately the decision that was made with the consensus of the community working with the City of Boston, and working with the [state transportation authority].”

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by James R. Jones

Throughout the course of the day, amidst a sea of gawking tourists and politicking lawmakers, African American employees nod to one another while walking in the hallways of the U.S. Capitol. In a recently published study, I investigated why Black staffers nod to one another and what it means.

The Black professional staff I interviewed often brushed the nod off as a common cultural practice shared among African Americans outside of Capitol Hill. However, my analysis shows that what happens in these ephemeral interactions goes beyond signaling a quick greeting. Instead, it conveys important information about what it means to be Black while working in a White-dominated political institution.

My findings demonstrate that what happens in micro-level encounters is not just about the individuals involved, but also characterizes and embodies a complex socio-historical relationship about race and power in the United States and in Congress.

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by Jessi Streib

How do upward and downward mobility occur? And, what role, if any, does culture play?

These are core sociological questions, but sociologists struggle to answer them. Rather, cultural sociologists have thrown their intellectual weight behind studying the opposite of mobility – class reproduction. From cultural Marxism, to the culture of poverty, to Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and capital, sociologists have articulated many ways that culture leads people to stay in the class to which they were born.

Yet, not everyone remains in their class of birth. In fact, even in this age of inequality, most Americans move through the class structure at some point in their lives. Of children born into the middle income quintile between 1980 and 1982, only 22% stayed there as adults; 18% entered the top income quintile and 18% entered the bottom income quintile.

Among children born in the lowest income quintile in those same years, 38% made it into one of the top three. Of those born in the top income quintile, about the same number fell down into the bottom three quintiles. Mobility is with us, but cultural sociologists have mostly ignored it.

We need better theories of how culture facilitates mobility. If we are prepared to say that culture matters for class reproduction, we should at least entertain the idea that it also matters for mobility.

In a recently published article, I theorize how culture facilitates upward and downward mobility. I identify three cultural mechanisms of how youth born in poverty and the working-class launch into the middle-class, and three cultural mechanisms about how youth born into the upper-classes fall.

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by Nathan Wilmers

In October 2016, after a month-long strike, 750 dining hall workers at Harvard University won an increase in their minimum annual salary to $35,000.  This wage boost seems to demonstrate the pay-offs to union activism.

But, for skeptics the link is not so clear.  The wage increase happened while the labor market tightened for low-skilled workers, as the Massachusetts unemployment dropped to 3.6%.  Maybe Harvard would have struggled to retain good dining hall workers at a lower salary.

And Harvard is rich.  Absent union pressure, the University would probably still pay dining hall workers more than its less well-funded peer institutions.  Maybe the observed 10% to 25% national union wage premium comes from unions organizing employers, like Harvard, that would have paid higher wages with or without a union.

For these reasons, recent research has been skeptical about unions’ capacity to increase workers’ wages.  Since the early 1980s, labor union membership density has been cut in half, from around 1 in 5 workers to 1 in 10 today.  If product markets are getting more and more competitive, employers’ margins should narrow, and there might be scant room for unions to bargain.  Studies of close union representation elections show that when a union barely wins, wages do not increase more than when a union barely loses.

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by Geraint Harvey, Carl Rhodes, Sheena Vachhani and Karen Williams

The ranks of the self-employed in the U.K. have increased considerably in recent years. Currently, around 15 per cent of working people declare themselves to be self-employed. But this image of a self-employed workforce needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Recent research by Citizens Advice Bureau that around 460,000 people might be ‘bogusly self-employed’.

It is reported that this bogus self-employment means that firms hire people as contractors rather than employees so as to avoid paying the minimum wage, National Insurance, sick pay, holiday pay and pension contributions.

The result? Workers suffer because money that was previously was paid to them is transferred to the coffers of the business. Society suffers because business pays less tax. The UK authority for income tax collection, HM Revenue and Customs, estimates that that it lost £430 million as a result of unpaid tax related directly to ambiguity in employment status. In the Republic of Ireland the figure is estimated to be €650 million in the construction sector alone.

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by Robin Bartram

How does a left-leaning social history museum with progressive intentions end up obscuring structural inequality? My recent study answers this question using observations and archival research at New York City’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

If you visit the Tenement Museum, docents show you around recreated living spaces of 18^th and 19^th century immigrant families. These apartments are full of objects that docents use as props to tell stories about the lives of their former inhabitants.

Take the example of the restored apartment of the German-Jewish immigrant Gumpertz family who lived in the building in the 1870s. Climbing a narrow staircase, docents tell visitors to imagine Natalia Gumpertz carrying heavy buckets of water up these steps. Inside the apartment, docents pass around an iron so visitors can feel the weight Natalia would have had to endure, and point to a sewing machine to explain that Natalia worked as a seamstress to provide for her children after being deserted by her husband during an economic depression.

Natalia’s hard work paid off, visitors learn, as she was eventually able to move her family to a New York suburb.

Over and over, docents use props to tell stories about Natalia’s hard work, resilience, and eventual triumph in the face of adversity. As such, Natalia is an example of what I came to call a “historic role model” because of the way the museum stresses her endurance and ultimate success.

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