Missing Men? Precarity and Declining Labor Force Participation Among Working-Class Men

Recent research has noted declining labor force participation among working class men in the United States, but with little attention to the mechanisms underlying such withdrawal. In this article—drawing on in-depth interviews with 61 working-class men from rural Pennsylvania—I address this gap in the literature by prodding respondents on the sequential character of their employment experiences, their perceived vulnerabilities, and the calculations they make in the contexts in which they live. Findings reveal fluctuations in their engagement with work, something I refer to as participation churn. However, respondents’ labor force narratives also show how they adapt to local employment conditions and personal circumstances, a phenomenon referred to as adaptive nonparticipation. The results highlight key mechanisms underlying labor force dropout and have implications for how declining labor force participation should be understood. These findings advance the sociological understanding of how workers—even in precarious positions—assert agency.

The making of a ‘new Dubai’

In Tharparkar, south-east Pakistan, over 300 kilometres of roads are being constructed to facilitate access to a coalfield intended to provide power to an electricity-starved country. The new roads are often sold as harbingers of great change and signs of modernity. Industry and the sought-after prize of foreign direct investment are presented as being just around the corner. I was often told that Thar (Tharparkar) would become ‘a Dubai’, which represented an ultimate symbol of modernity. Scholars have argued that neoliberalism’s achievements are double: narrowing the window of political debate, while promising prospects without limit. In Tharparkar, the immediate roads effect has been increased land speculation, with little tangible improvements with regards to local employment. I argue that the ‘transition rhetoric’ being used by the state and the local political elite has no relation to the actual economic and political processes, except to veil interests of the elite groups. The material from Tharparker demonstrates that roads as symbols of ‘modernity’ can be used to deconstruct some of the contradictions at the heart of many modernization myths.

Parent Enablers of Education Support for Young People with Hearing Impairment in Pakistan

This article examines the support received by young people with hearing impairment from parent enablers of education in Pakistan. In this ethically designed research, the society’s learning pathways of strong and weak knowledge and education centralised the voice of young people with hearing impairment as a methodology to evaluate society’s influence on parent enablers support, including from for-profit and not-for-profit education. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 young people with hearing impairment, 10 each from for-profit and not-for-profit education. The case-by-case analysis of young peoples’ voice showed that in strong pathway, the binding together of family support in education with society formed young peoples’ equal but different identity that shaped an imbalance in gender and social choice of impairment over poverty with restricted translation of for-profit education in employment outside the family. In weak pathway, the family support in education disconnected from society formed young peoples’ same but unequal identity that shaped conflict in gender and social choice of poverty over impairment with limited conversion of not-for-profit education in local employment. In conclusion, alignment of society and parent enablers of education with reference to gender is required for young peoples’ entry in outside and local employment for sustainable development in Pakistan.

How much lockdown policies contribute to local unemployment? Evidence from the first and second waves of COVID-19

Did people reduce their social interactions as a result of the pandemic, restrictive lockdown policies, or both? What was the impact of reduced social interactions on local employment? Importantly, why did unemployment spike during the first wave of the pandemic, but gradually decline thereafter, even though the outbreak was much more severe during the second wave? In this note, we attempt to answer these questions by exploiting newly available data on hours worked among small firms at the industry-county-state-week level.