Privileged and Unprivileged Precarity: Multi-level Marketing as a Site of Non-Standard Work in the New Economy

Due to the shrinking social safety net, an uptick in perceived job insecurity, and other factors, a growing share of workers up taking up non-standard working arrangements. Multi-level marketing (MLM) organizations are a large site of non-standard employment arrangements, employing roughly 7.3 million people in the United States. Doctoral student in sociology Nicole Cochran will compare the experiences of working class and/or non-white and middle-to-upper class white MLM workers. She will conduct interviews and participant observation for her study.