Research and media discussion of police contact routinely conceptualize it as time-constrained interactions between officers and civilians. However, extant literature documents preparation for encounters and post-encounter advocacy, which each challenge restricted understandings of contact and, importantly, its relationship to mental health. We introduce “perpetual encounters” to both theoretically

A growing proportion of children live in unaffordable, overcrowded, or doubled-up housing, raising concerns among scholars of child wellbeing. These arrangements may affect children through increased exposure to insecure mobility such as frequent or reactive moves. Though scholars consider resource-strained arrangements insecure, the assumption that they lead to insecure mobility is quantitatively

Although much extreme discourse is found at the poles, we still know little about how individuals in the center make sense of immigration as “complicated” and even “too complex” to make sense of. Such issues are important to address if we are to better understand the contemporary landscape of bias and belonging and the character of attitudes in the middle. We examine the issue by drawing on a unique

Scholars posit that the flexibility stigma—a belief that workers who use flexible workplace policies, such as parental and sick leave—exacerbates gender inequality. However, a large body of research argues that the smaller number of men who take leaves face even more severe stigma than women because they violate norms of masculinity as well as the employers’ expectation that employees prioritize paid

Studies have long documented a persistent link between sectarian Protestantism and authoritarian parenting ideologies and disciplinary practices. The current study proposes “Christian nationalism” as a schema that demands civic and social life be ordered according to sectarian Protestant norms, and consequently, a key dynamic in shaping how Americans think about parenting and punishment. Given that

This review explores Anna Gjika’s When Rape Goes Viral (2023), a sociological study of how digital technologies transform the dynamics of sexual violence among youth. Through detailed analysis of high-profile cases like Steubenville and Maryville, Gjika argues that social media not only amplifies rape culture but also shifts how consent, victimhood, and justice are perceived. The book examines the

This article presents a socio-historical analysis of the ways women’s everyday resistance and struggles over several decades have contributed to the emergence of the Woman, Life, Freedom (WLF) movement in Iran. Drawing on archival and (digital) ethnographic data spanning from the mid-19th century to the 2022 WLF movement, I take a spatiotemporal approach to illustrate the evolution of feminist politics

This paper investigates the political activities of different segments within the capitalist class, comparing an inner circle of interlocked directors to a list of Norwegian wealthy owners. Drawing on a unique dataset that combines data on corporate boards with political participation records, the study compares wealthy owners and an “inner circle” of corporate directors. The findings reveal a division

The welfare magnet hypothesis states that welfare generosity in destination countries is a migration pull factor. However, supporting evidence is mixed. Previous research has focused on explanatory factors in destination countries rather than in origin countries, examined migration from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development country perspectives rather than from a global perspective

Americans’ views on taxation exercise a powerful influence on political outcomes. Yet these views cannot be solely attributed to partisanship or even racial or economic self-interest. Recent work on the cultural sociology of taxation stresses that Americans’ views on taxes are shaped by their understanding of proper social order. Integrating these insights with burgeoning work on Christian nationalism

Understanding the long-term effect of early childhood poverty on a child’s life prospects presents a methodological challenge due to the potential endogeneity of family income, making it difficult to establish a clear causal relationship. This study addresses this challenge by exploiting a natural experiment: a major reduction in child allowances and income support benefits for families with young

Physical attractiveness has been linked to better economic, dyadic, and health outcomes but is understudied. We focus here on the gendered implications of attractiveness for one component of social well-being, access to intimate partnership and sexuality, among older adults. In addition, we examine the role of body size, as measured and rated by an observer, in evaluating attractiveness and the diverging

As more women enter traditionally male-dominated professions, it is important to understand how feminization has—or has not—impacted work cultures, with implications for women’s mental wellbeing. Research on proportional representation and mental health suggests that as professions feminize, women’s mental wellbeing should benefit from shifting peer cultures. However, gender stratification scholars

This study assesses whether the legacy of colonialism continues to influence patterns of civil violence in the contemporary era. A large and established quantitative literature attributes civil violence to low levels of economic development and limited political rights, but few quantitative studies consider whether colonial legacy plays an enduring role in such conflicts. This is surprising given the

Institutional anomie theory (IAT) posits that religion is a social institution that influences crime, yet religion has been relatively neglected in empirical research on IAT. We elaborate the role of religion within IAT, methodologically differentiate religious traditions, and empirically test hypotheses regarding local religious ecologies and community homicide over time in the United States. In analyses

After rising for almost two centuries, global income inequality declined substantially after 2000. While past scholarship on global inequality has explored several causes for this recent decline in inequality, these studies take for granted the official GDP figures released by national governments. A parallel social science literature has documented the manipulation of official data to exaggerate economic

Despite ongoing debates on environmental justice, the link between selective residential migration and the unequal exposure to environmental hazards remains underexplored. Previous research has often relied on spatially aggregated data and focused on single-country analyses, limiting our understanding of broader patterns. We address this gap using longitudinal household-level data from the UK Household

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented employer-driven shift to remote/hybrid work for those whose jobs allow it, but then came retrenchments, forging disjunctures between where one works (remote/hybrid or in-person) and individual preferences, which we term work-place mismatch. We draw on a combined worker power, employer biases, and adaptive strategy theoretical framing to investigate work-place

Though recent research on White racial solidarity has advanced our understanding of White identity politics in the United States, the religious underpinnings of White identity politics remain understudied. Building on the documented conflation of religious, racial, and national identities among White Americans, we propose American Christian nationalism is best thought of as the religion of White identity

Equalizing opportunities and outcomes between individuals with and without disabilities is a stated goal for most governments in Western welfare democracies. Yet, significant disability-based inequalities remain in many domains of life. One of the causes of this gap is the widespread discrimination of individuals with disabilities. Over the last two decades, most European countries have introduced

While stratification scholars have extensively examined intergenerational associations in lifetime income, they have mostly disregarded how family background affects exposure to income volatility over the life course. As exposure to volatility represents a non-desirable outcome associated with negative shocks to individuals’ welfare, studying the link between family background and volatility is key

Over recent decades, the relative wellbeing of younger birth cohorts declined in many western countries, indicating growing generational inequality. Building on Durkheimian theory, this paper examines explanations for these changes, hypothesizing that differences in cohort wellbeing are related to variations in social integration associated with birth cohorts and national socio-political contexts.

Despite recent increases in females entering male-typed job domains, women are more likely to exit these jobs than men, leading to a “leaky-pipeline” phenomenon and contributing to continued occupational gender segregation. Extant work has demonstrated that women are less likely to reapply to employers who previously rejected them for jobs in male-typed job domains. However, these studies leave unexamined

Racial segregation is an enduring social reality in the United States. Since safety is central to residential and educational decisions, one explanation is, when choosing neighborhoods and schools, individuals use racial composition to signal safety. However, few studies have focused on race-based perceptions of school safety. To examine racialized school safety beliefs, I leverage an original survey

Increasingly children whose parents no longer live together are living in two households, alternating between family contexts. A growing literature documents strong, descriptive heterogeneities in children’s wellbeing across living arrangements. We combine longitudinal survey and administrative population data on 6000 Danish children born in 1995 to study how children’s emotional and behavioral problems

How and in what sequence do social structures, contingent events, and agents’ decisions combine over time to bring about a new populist right? To answer this question, we propose a framework to analyze social processes spanning three levels of analysis: global political economy, national political articulation, and subnational political geography. We challenge static theories that focus solely on the

This article examines mechanisms related to lawmaker support for public policies based on scientific evidence and supportive of organized science. We propose that Republican lawmakers are more likely than Democrats to oppose these policies because Republicans are less likely than Democrats to base policy decisions on scientific authority and more likely than Democrats to base decisions on religious

In reaction to terrorism, current research shows that discriminatory attitudes against immigrant populations among native populations sometimes increase. However, it is unclear if native populations respond to threats with a specifically targeted anti-immigrant sentiment or whether there is a general increase in anti-immigrant views that spill over to other minority groups. Furthermore, plausible processes

Social networks are segregated by sociodemographic characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status. A key reason for this segregation is homophily, or people's preferences to associate with similar others. Homophily is documented for relationships of different strengths, ranging from marriage and close friendship to weaker acquaintanceships. But does sociodemographic homophily

This study investigates the multifaceted factors influencing immigrants’ naturalization intentions, with a primary focus on legal requirements and the implementation of naturalization laws. It distinguishes between different groups of non-citizens, such as refugees, European Union (EU) citizens, and non-EU citizens. Employing a vignette experiment among non-citizens in a large-scale representative

Despite political calls on the state to “protect the children” from sexual violence, feminist scholars argue the state itself reproduces routine gender-based violence toward incarcerated communities, including youth. Building upon this work, I draw from twenty-three life history interviews with formerly incarcerated cis- and transgender men and women survivors to show how carceral norms facilitate

There has been an intense yet inconclusive debate over the impacts of socioeconomic status (SES) and postmaterialism on environmental concern. Recent years have seen a growing interest in addressing the controversy by exploring the conditioning effect of social context. Previous studies of inequality argue that it unevenly exposes people to environmental degradation, reduces social cooperation, and

Most models of cultural globalization describe circulation to and around conventional cultural centers. The art world becomes more inclusive, but its fundamental hierarchies remain in place. In this paper, we describe another form of cultural globalization called “decentering”, which involves the circulation and increased interconnectedness between peripheries, either with or without their integration

Why do foreign-born immigrant workers often concentrate in low-wage, minority-dense workplaces? Do immigrants’ native-born children—who typically acquire better language skills, education, and country-specific knowledge—experience improved access to workplaces in the mainstream economy? Using economy-wide linked employer–employee administrative data from Norway, we analyze both ethnic and economic

Are the positions that protesters take—in favor or against change—consequential for their ability to affect policy? While previous research suggests that protests can inform legislative priorities and facilitate policy introduction, this paper emphasizes policy inaction and stasis as goals of some protest actions. Analysis uses novel and detailed data on energy-related protest and policy actions in

The global housing affordability crisis and COVID shutdowns have put living space inequality back on the political agenda. Drawing on Durkheim’s theory of anomie and density, this paper argues that on how many square meters a society lives matters for how stable or anomic it develops. Using data from the Swiss Household Panel, we examine the selection, short-term, and dynamic effects associated with

Understanding the causes and consequences of corporate risk-taking has remained a crucial topic for organizational scholars. Using the case of U.S. banks and one dimension of their risk-taking behavior around the 2008 financial crisis, we offer a theory of how the diverse experiences of corporate leaders can shape their risk-taking behavior. Building on the imprinting literature, we theorize how different

In this paper, I introduce the concept of pseudo-formality as a novel form of relational work in economic sociology. Pseudo-formality refers to the performative use of formal aesthetics, such as contracts and repayment plans, in financial exchanges between close ties—as both parties tacitly understand that the agreement is flexible and not legally binding. I argue that pseudo-formality works by leveraging

Prior scholarship demonstrates that motherhood wage penalties and fatherhood wage premiums contribute to the gender pay gap. These analyses typically take a cross-sectional perspective, asking to what extent gender inequalities in the association between parenthood and wages can explain gender pay inequality for a given cohort or at a given moment in time. By contrast, explorations of gender pay convergence

We examine the gendered distribution of peer-ascribed status in schools. Using network data from more than 14,000 students in 676 classrooms, we explore gender differences in the ascription of status and the types of behavior rewarded with status. On average, girls receive slightly fewer status ascriptions than boys, and students tend to grant status more frequently within the same gender. Contextual

How do states control labor migration? Furthering global trends, nation states increasingly seek to include foreigners in labor markets while excluding them from settling. Yet, dominant theories maintain a limited conception of migration control as primarily immigrant restriction, especially in the global North. Thailand offers a paradigmatic case for understanding labor migration control and the dual

While prior research has widely acknowledged the consequences of specific family transitions (e.g., parental death, parenthood, grandparenthood) for individual wealth holdings, the interplay of multiple family transitions and positions occurring at different life stages and in various orderings has received little attention. This is despite the fact that these transitions and positions most likely

Scholarship on social movements, racism, and nationalism increasingly falls under the purview of “extremism studies” and its subfield “far-right studies.” Prominent extremism scholars have developed generalist theories purportedly explaining far-right politics and power dynamics (or “mainstreaming”) across liberal societies. They define “far-right” as “illiberal” politics promoting dehumanization,

Parental transfers of money and co-residence to young-adult children can serve as means of status reproduction. Yet, the relationship between inequality and socio-economic gaps in these forms of parental support has not been studied. Inequality may widen socio-economic differentials in monetary and co-residential transfers, potentially hindering social mobility. I test the association between income

While there is a strong cross-sectional association between social class and political attitudes, recent research—based on longitudinal data—finds that changes in class are, at most, weakly related to changes in such attitudes. One common explanation for this finding is that early life socialization affects both social class and political attitudes and that class has little, if any, direct effect on

This paper examines the labor market incorporation of skilled Indian migrants returning home after working in the United States. I analyze a novel dataset of 7,177 time-varying transnational employment histories from LinkedIn using logistic regression and survival analysis. I find that skilled Indian migrants experience occupational upgrades when re-entering their home labor market, buoyed by foreign

Research has demonstrated that couples have similar partisan preferences, a finding associated with political polarization. However, it remains debated to what extent different mechanisms contribute to this homogamy. Analyzing dyadic panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel 1984–2020, we distinguish analytically between (1) direct political matching (i.e., partner selection on matching party

Drawing on a unique survey of US workers with information about their employers’ policies on pay discussions and whether workers engage in such talk with their coworkers, we provide the most comprehensive investigation into pay talk in workplaces to date. Unlike existing treatments, we focus on core organizational and relational factors that influence whether workers talk about pay. We theorize pay

How stable are the public’s assumptions about the legitimacy of contentious tactics? Previous studies show that the public hold a set of assumptions about what counts as legitimate and illegitimate tactics. We enrich this literature by studying the stability of these assumptions through the case of partisan protesting in the United States. Leveraging panel data collected during the 2020 Black Lives

Benefit cutbacks have been prominent after the Great Recession. The Family Economic Stress Model (FESM) theorizes how financial losses such as those spurred by cutbacks might adversely affect parental and child well-being. Yet, few links with policy have been established. We extend current knowledge by comprehensively assessing how benefits cutbacks may affect parents and their adolescent children

In the United States, exclusionary public policies generate inequalities within and across labor, financial, and legal status hierarchies, which together undermine immigrant well-being. But can inclusive public policies improve immigrant health? We examine whether and how an immigrant-inclusive federal program, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), shaped health care access and use among farmworkers

Despite their significance, life-course dynamics are rarely considered as consequences of social movements. We address this shortcoming by investigating the relationship between protest and marriage formation in Ethiopia. Building on scholarship in social movements and insights from family demography, we argue that exposure to protest delays marriage formation. To test our theoretical arguments, we

Black people in the technology industry face various barriers, from encountering micro-aggressions from their coworkers to facing blocked advancement in their professional careers. These challenges are particularly pronounced in entrepreneurship, where Black founders receive just one percent of all venture capital funding. But amidst these shared struggles, questions arise as to what ways, if any,

Research has shown that socioeconomic and psychological resources may influence educational trajectories. There are still unanswered questions, however, about the unique roles of these resources and the interplay between them. We consider two such questions: First, how do major psychological resources—a sense of school belonging and optimistic future expectations—predict educational trajectories when

This paper connects insights from the literature on cosmopolitan worldviews and the effects of perspective-taking in political science, (intergroup) anxiety in social psychology, and identity economics in a vignette-style experiment. In particular, we asked German respondents about their attitudes towards a Syrian refugee, randomizing components of his description (N = 662). The main treatment describes

Receiving assistance can be stigmatizing. As the cash welfare rolls have fallen to near-historic lows, the privatization of the social safety net in many states has brought up new questions about how recipients of assistance meet their material needs without sacrificing their sense of dignity. I draw on 15 months of ethnographic observation and 44 interviews with social service recipients in two majority

The gender gap in political self-efficacy originates early in life and is among the most persistent inequalities in political attitudes across Western democracies. The difficulties in accessing data for early adolescents have resulted in limited research available to provide an understanding on how gender differences in political self-efficacy are developed. In this article we provide unique evidence

Unions serve as primary labor market institutions that improve employees’ working conditions, yet existing literature offers mixed results of their influence on workers’ access to work–family policies. This may be partially due to the extant literature having not considered possible variation across work contexts. In this study, I ask whether union coverage can increase workers’ access to work–family

Scholars have found that as the proportion of female workers in an occupation grows, wages generally decline. Yet, we know little about how this gender inequality intersects with other labor market inequalities. This study evaluates the feminization-wage relationship of an increasingly economically polarized post-2000 US labor market. First, I hypothesize that the negative effect of feminization on

How does competition for school resources, along with racial and socioeconomic biases, shape parental preferences for schools? In this article, I investigate how school attributes affect preferences and choice, which sheds light on the processes that maintain school segregation. To do so, I conduct a survey experiment that explores parental preferences and the tradeoffs inherent in the process of school