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This article examines experiences of workplace precarity and employment vulnerability among resettled refugees in the United States. Our study, which draws on eight months of participant observation at a refugee resettlement agency and in-depth interviews with refugees, provides important insights into the ways that refugees navigate (un)employment after initial resettlement and the precarities they encounter while on the job. Our findings suggest that the confluence of specific workplace experiences, familial expectations, and resettlement case processing creates distinct vulnerabilities for refugee men and women. Moreover, we find gender to be especially crucial to both work-family pressures and negative workplace encounters, limiting men’s employment opportunities and undercutting women’s labor market potential. We discuss associated vulnerabilities and gendered pressures and conclude by highlighting avenues for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological research has long been interested in inequalities generated by and within educational institutions. Although relatively rich as a literature, less analytic focus has centered on educational mobility and inequality experiences within graduate training specifically. In this article, we draw on a combination of survey and open-ended qualitative data from approximately 450 graduate students in the discipline of sociology to analyze graduate school pipeline divergences for first-generation and working-class students and the implications for inequalities in tangible resources, advising and support, and a sense of isolation. Our results point to an important connection between private undergraduate institutional enrollment and higher-status graduate program attendance—a pattern that undercuts social-class mobility in graduate training and creates notable precarities in debt, advising, and sense of belonging for first-generation and working-class graduate students. We conclude by discussing the unequal pathways revealed and their implications for merit and mobility, graduate training, and opportunity within our and other disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular attention to the multi‐million‐dollar enterprise of collegiate sports often centers on the extent to which student athletes are academically engaged. In this article, we draw on a national sample of approximately 5,000 college‐goers, employ key comparisons (i.e., high‐visibility student athletes, nonrevenue student athletes, and nonathletes), and consider background disadvantages and collegiate division levels relative to achievement (i.e., grade point average) and bachelor's degree completion. Analyses show that once background attributes and division levels are accounted for, there is little difference in achievement and attainment between high‐visibility student athletes and their nonathlete peers. There is, however, a dual advantage in 4‐year degree completion for those playing other collegiate sports—an advantage tied to their more privileged family and educational backgrounds and their participation in intercollegiate athletics itself. Our results in these regards are robust to several restrictive and analytically rigorous modeling strategies. We conclude by highlighting the implications for higher education research and its attention to inequality, educational representation, institutional processes, and student success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New "governance" reforms entailing shifts toward privatization have permeated the public sector over the last decade, possibly affecting workplace-based attainments. We examine the consequences of this reform for African American men, who during the civil rights era reached relative parity with whites. We analyze race-based inequities on one socioeconomic outcome-downward occupational mobility-among professionals, managers and executives. Results from a Panel Study of Income Dynamics sample indicate that the "new government business model," characterized by increased employer discretion has disproportionately disadvantaged African Americans. Narrower racial gaps in the incidence, determinants and timing of downward mobility found in the public sector, relative to the private sector, during the pre-reform period (1985-90) eroded during the reform period (2002-07) because of widening racial gaps in the public sector.

Power is a core theoretical construct in the field with amazing utility across substantive areas, levels of analysis and methodologies. Yet, its use along with associated assumptions--assumptions surrounding constraint vs. action and specifically organizational structure and rationality--remain problematic. In this article, and following an overview of important divides on the topic, I develop a dynamic relational theory of power. My framework, which builds on several strands of literature and my own in-depth investigations of workplace discrimination, challenges prevailing top-down conceptions of bureaucratic organizational constraint and rationality (derived from Weber). It also makes explicit the constitutive interplay of structure, culture and action, and provides significant insight into the relational nature of power. Relational, in these regards, entails often-assumed interpersonal interactions but also the capacities of actors to invoke structure (and thus leverage) and legitimate inequality through a two-pronged process of symbolic vilification and amplification. Contemporary bureaucracy and its structural and cultural foundations can provide the leverage for doing so and in a manner whereby hierarchical projects surrounding race, sex, age and social class are systematically reified.

Building on prior work surrounding negative work-related experiences, such as workplace bullying and sexual harassment, we examine the extent to which organizational context is meaningful for the subjective experience of sex discrimination. Data draw on the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, which provides a key indicator of individuals' sex discrimination experiences as well as core and arguably influential dimensions of organizational context--i.e., sex composition, workplace culture and relative power--suggested by prior research. Results indicate that the experience of sex discrimination is reduced for both women and men when they are part of the numerical majority of their work group. Although supportive workplace cultures mitigate the likelihood of sex discrimination, relative power in the workplace seems to matter little. We conclude by revisiting these results relative to perspectives surrounding hierarchy maintenance and group competition, but also the potential importance of internal cultural dynamics and workplace histories. (Contains 3 tables and 1 note.)

The authors welcome and appreciate the comments of Eric Grodsky and Sigal Alon on their article "Shadow Education, American Style: Test Preparation, the SAT and College Enrollment." In their comments, Grodsky takes issue with several important theoretical and methodological aspects of their article and Alon highlights key processes pertaining to race/ethnicity. Grodsky's and Alon's emphases on theoretical conception, measurement and process, when taken together, offer fertile ground for contemplation and future research. The authors respond accordingly in this article. Beginning with theoretical issues, they restate and stand by their definition of shadow education relative to the alternative, narrower definition that Grodsky prefers. Their measurement and modeling strategy follows directly from their theoretical discussion and captures--more effectively than Grodsky's dichotomous approach--the interconnected and overlapping nature of student test preparation. They then turn to Alon's response and analyses, which elaborate on their results in important ways with respect to racial/ethnic minorities and suggest differential processes in the course of educational mobility. They then highlight some avenues for future research on shadow education. (Contains 1 table.)