Childcare responsibilities are essential for child development and the future of our society. Yet unevenly shared childcare duties can stall the mobility trajectories of those disproportionately providing childcare. Sociologist Juan Pedroza will examine how childcare arrangements among mixed-status immigrant households differ from U.S.-born households and how these arrangements affect their social and economic mobility. He will analyze data from the American Time Use Survey for his study.
Research has found the belief that racial inequality is due to cultural or personal differences, as opposed to systemic barriers, is growing amongst Black Americans. Sociologist Jasmine Hill will study the impact of political education (e.g., critical race theory) on Black Americans’ inequality beliefs and susceptibility to predatory inclusion schemes like cryptocurrency. She will conduct a series of survey experiments for her study.
Although most prisoners work behind bars, they are not classified as employees and are thus denied many rights and protections. This workforce suffers sparse wages and harsh treatment without the ability to organize against underregulated conditions. Sociologist Michael Gibson-Light will examine attempts by incarcerated people to unionize in the 1970s to better understand the challenges that today’s imprisoned workers encounter. He will conduct a historical analysis of three labor organizations that were at the center of the 1970s prison labor movement for his study.
Previous scholarship on homelessness has focused on single, street-homeless, adult men and has largely neglected to examine the experiences of homeless families and children. Sociologist Sean Drake will explore how homelessness impacts children’s experiences with school, including how homelessness makes schooling unpredictable, inconsistent, and challenging. He will conduct participant observation, in-depth interviews, and diary interviews for his study.
A landmark series of studies found that the preferences of average citizens have no significant impact on the passage of public policy. Using the War on Poverty in the 1960s as a case study, sociologist Tarun Banerjee will investigate what factors best explain the implementation of federal policy. He will analyze the distribution of Community Action Program grants, county-level administrative data, and data from the Dynamics of Contentious Action dataset for his study.
Collateral sanctions restrict people with criminal convictions from obtaining certain jobs, voting, living in certain areas, and pursuing educational opportunities. Sociologists Laura DeMarco and Sadé Lindsay will investigate what justice-involved people know about collateral sanctions and how perceptions of colleterial sanctions impact their housing, employment, and educational aspirations and attainment. They will conduct a survey for their study.
Wellesley, Massachusetts is a historically White Anglo-Saxon Protestant community that has experienced immigration and increased diversity in recent decades. Sociologist Catherine Bueker will examine how longtime White residents and mainstream institutions of Wellesley, MA, such as schools and religious organizations, view and experience increasing diversity. She will conduct interviews and participant observations as well as analyze archival data from the local newspaper for her study.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and its corresponding effects on work, such as increased burnout, the four-day work week has re-emerged as a way to promote work-life balance, productivity, and a reduction in companies’ carbon footprint. Economist Juliet Schor and sociologists Wen Fan and Phyllis Moen will examine the effect of a four-day work week schedule on job quality, worker productivity, workers’ quality of life, and the environment.
In recent years, technology companies have grappled with the underrepresentation of Black, Latinx, and women workers. Research has shown that women and people of color face specific organizational barriers in the tech industry. Sociologist Sigrid Luhr will examine how the transition to remote work at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic affected experiences of work-life conflict and whether these experiences vary by race, gender, and parental status. She will conduct 120 longitudinal in-depth interviews for her study.
Federal law only guarantees new parents six weeks of unpaid time off and only about one-fifth of workers have employer-provided paid family leave. Additionally, not all workers who are eligible for state or employer programs take parental leave, possibly due to perceived penalties and stigma associate with it. Sociologists Trenton Mize, Richard Petts, and Gayle Kaufman will examine attitudes towards parental leave taken by single parents (both women and men) and parents in same-gender and different-gender couples. They will conduct a survey experiment for their study.