Immigrant–Native Wage Gaps at Work: How the Public and Private Sectors Shape Relational Inequality Processes

We investigate how the institutional context of the public and private sectors regulates the association of workplace diversity policies and relational status positions with first- and second-generation immigrants’ wages. Using unique linked employer–employee data combining administrative and survey information of 6,139 employees in 120 German workplaces, we estimate workplace fixed-effects regressions. Workplace processes are institutionally contingent: diversity policies such as mixed teams reduce inequalities in the public sector, and diversity policies such as language courses reinforce existing inequalities in the private sector. In public sector workplaces where natives hold higher relational positions, immigrants’ wages are lower. This group-related dynamic is not detectable in the private sector.

Working More, Less or the Same During COVID-19? A Mixed Method, Intersectional Analysis of Remote Workers

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed where paid work is done. Workers able to do so have been required to work remotely. We draw on survey data collected in October 2020 from a nationally representative sample of 3,017 remote workers, as well as qualitative survey data collected from 231 remote workers, to examine perceived changes in work hours from before to during the pandemic. Results indicate women are at greater risk of change (either a major decrease or a major increase)—rather than stability—in work hours. Gender also intersects with caregiving, race/ethnicity, prior remote work experiences, and socioeconomic status to shape changes in hours. Women and men in the sandwich generation, as well as women (but not men) with pre-school children, are the most likely to report a decrease in work hours, whereas women with older children at home or caring for adults (but not both) are the most likely to have an increase in hours. Remote working Black women and women moving into remote work are more likely to experience a major increase in hours worked, even as Hispanic women and Black men are the most likely to report somewhat of a reduction in work hours. Gender also intersects with SES, such that women without a college degree are more likely to have a decrease in work hours, while women with an advanced degree and women managers report a considerable increase in work hours. Qualitative data further illuminate why work hours change or remain stable for remote workers during COVID-19.

Unequal Reach: Cyclical and Amplifying Ties Among Agricultural and Oilfield Workers in Texas

What kinds of ties do agricultural and oil and gas workers form in the field, and how do they use them later on? Why do they use them differently? Scholarship highlights how weak ties can link people to valuable information, while strong ties can be critical for day-to-day survival. Yet many mechanisms affect how workers form and use social networks over time and space. Drawing on 60 interviews and observations with agricultural and oilfield workers in Texas, I examine how both groups form strong ties of fictive kinship when living together in the field far from home—pooling resources, sharing reproductive labor, and using the discourse of family to describe these relationships. Then I examine how they use these ties very differently later in practice. Oilfield workers often use their fictive kin ties to move up and around the industry across space, time, and companies: amplifying ties. In contrast, agricultural workers renew the same strong ties for survival from season to season, maintaining cyclical ties. The comparison highlights how industry mobility ladders, tempos, and geographies affect how workers can use their networks in practice. While both agricultural and oilfield workers become fictive kin in situations of intense proximity, structural differences give their networks unequal reach.

Narrative Continuity/Rupture: Projected Professional Futures amid Pervasive Employment Precarity

As working conditions change worldwide, employment precarity is increasing, including for groups for whom such conditions are unexpected. This study investigates how members of one such group—educationally advantaged young adults—describe their professional futures in a context of unprecedented employment precarity where their expected trajectories are no longer easily achievable. Using 75 interviews with young university graduates in Madrid, Spain, I find that most young graduates drew on a long-standing cultural narrative, which I call the “achievement narrative,” to imagine future stable employment. Simultaneously, most denounced this narrative as fraudulent. To explain this finding, I draw on the concept of hysteresis: the mismatch between beliefs that are dependent on the past conditions that produced them and the available opportunities in the present. I argue that hysteresis can extend into future projections; projected futures can be guided by beliefs based on past conditions more than by lived experiences in the present. Further, I argue that the achievement narrative itself reinforces hysteresis in future projections due to its resonance and institutional support. The paper offers new insights into projected futures and employment precarity by analyzing the future projections of a privileged cohort facing unexpected precarity, further develops the concept of hysteresis, and extends the study of cultural narratives.