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Stereotyped as “model minorities” who excel in the classroom, Asian Americans are more highly educated than all other U.S. groups. Once in the labor market, they outearn White Americans. Some believe this is evidence that White privilege, racial bias, and gender discrimination are fictitious narratives of a liberal “woke” agenda. Others use it as proof that confirms their stereotypes that Asian Americans are inherently smarter and harder working than other groups. While much attention has focused on Asian Americans’ academic achievement, far less research considers whether their later careers mirror their early success. In this issue of RSF, sociologists Jennifer Lee, Kimberly Goyette, Xi Song, and Yu Xie, management scholar Jackson G. Lu, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine how Asian Americans fare in the workplace.

The ten articles in this issue examine the ways in which Asian Americans, due to geographic clustering, are advantaged at a national level but disadvantaged at the regional level, how gender, family, and marriage impact Asian Americans in the workplace, and the different ways Asian Americans strategically adapt to the labor market. Robert Manduca and Jane Furey reveal that while, on average, Asian Americans outearn White Americans at a national level, when compared to Whites living in the same metropolitan area, Asians earn only 88 percent as much. Sharon Sassler and Gabrielle Sorresso find that among computer science professionals, Indian women have a larger gender wage gap than White and Chinese women and experience larger marriage and parenthood penalties in earnings. Sojung Lim and Wonjeong Jeong show that Asian women are more likely to live with extended family than White women, leading to higher rates of employment among Asian women with children. Angelina Grigoryeva finds that while Asian Americans are more likely to receive stock-based compensation than White Americans, this is because they are more likely to work in jobs where stock options are provided. Asians and Whites working in the same types of jobs are equally likely to receive stock-based compensation and in similar amounts. Shih-Chun Chien and colleagues find that despite being the fastest-growing racial minority group entering the legal profession, Asian Americans are underrepresented in leadership positions. They find this pattern is attributed, in part, to employers’ pervasive stereotypes that Asian Americans lack traits typically associated with leadership, such as creativity and assertiveness.

This issue of RSF reveals that the perception of the Asian American advantage in the workplace is illusory and sheds light on the lived experiences of the “model minority” when they go to work.

Note the copy pertains to two issues of RSF:

Status – a form of inequality based on esteem, respect, and honor – affects how people are treated in all aspects of their lives, including in schools, workplaces, politics, and even the family. It shapes people’s access to valued outcomes in life, such as income, education, and health. However, status is poorly understood and its significance in the construction of inequality is often underestimated. In this special double issue of RSF, sociologist Cecilia L. Ridgeway, social psychologist Hazel Rose Markus, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine how status functions in society and its role in inequality.
 
Issue 1 demonstrates that status is fundamental to inequality and shows that it is different from other forms of inequality. Tali Mendelberg presents a theory of how status functions in politics and differentiates the potent symbolic value of achieving greater esteem from status-seeking as a means to obtain resources, such as income, assets, or property. Biko Koeing finds that Trump voters were motivated not only by a perceived loss of status, but by the belief that this loss was unjust. Fabien Accominotti and colleagues assess the characteristics of status hierarchies and find that those with greater clarity, rigidity, and order have greater inequality between high and low status members.
 
Issue 2 examines how status is created and reinforced through cultural norms and in our relationships with one another. Hilary Holbrow finds that the gender pay gap is nearly three times greater in companies where low-status support roles are held primarily by females. Natasha Quadlin finds that college graduates who are perceived to be wealthy are also perceived to be more intelligent than they would be if they were perceived to be members of a lower socioeconomic group. Annette Lareau finds that married women often behave in ways – such as disengagement from financial matters or downplaying their own financial knowledge – that sustain their husband’s status as economic expert of the family. Bianca Manago and colleagues find that prior contact and group interaction between Whites, Blacks, and Mexican Americans decreases Whites’ anxiety about working with Blacks and Mexican Americans, but does not increase Whites’ perceptions of Blacks’ and Mexican Americans’ competence. Status interventions during interaction, however, do increase Whites’ perceptions of Mexican Americans’ competence and their influence in the group.  Lehn Benjamin finds that staff at nonprofit organizations who share control and establish common ground with their clients reduce status hierarchies between staff and clients.
 
This volume of RSF sheds light on status as a powerful social force which pervades our lives, and demonstrates its role in creating and preserving inequality.

Note the copy pertains to two issues of RSF:

Status – a form of inequality based on esteem, respect, and honor – affects how people are treated in all aspects of their lives, including in schools, workplaces, politics, and even the family. It shapes people’s access to valued outcomes in life, such as income, education, and health. However, status is poorly understood and its significance in the construction of inequality is often underestimated. In this special double issue of RSF, sociologist Cecilia L. Ridgeway, social psychologist Hazel Rose Markus, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine how status functions in society and its role in inequality.
 
Issue 1 demonstrates that status is fundamental to inequality and shows that it is different from other forms of inequality. Tali Mendelberg presents a theory of how status functions in politics and differentiates the potent symbolic value of achieving greater esteem from status-seeking as a means to obtain resources, such as income, assets, or property. Biko Koeing finds that Trump voters were motivated not only by a perceived loss of status, but by the belief that this loss was unjust. Fabien Accominotti and colleagues assess the characteristics of status hierarchies and find that those with greater clarity, rigidity, and order have greater inequality between high and low status members.
 
Issue 2 examines how status is created and reinforced through cultural norms and in our relationships with one another. Hilary Holbrow finds that the gender pay gap is nearly three times greater in companies where low-status support roles are held primarily by females. Natasha Quadlin finds that college graduates who are perceived to be wealthy are also perceived to be more intelligent than they would be if they were perceived to be members of a lower socioeconomic group. Annette Lareau finds that married women often behave in ways – such as disengagement from financial matters or downplaying their own financial knowledge – that sustain their husband’s status as economic expert of the family. Bianca Manago and colleagues find that prior contact and group interaction between Whites, Blacks, and Mexican Americans decreases Whites’ anxiety about working with Blacks and Mexican Americans, but does not increase Whites’ perceptions of Blacks’ and Mexican Americans’ competence. Status interventions during interaction, however, do increase Whites’ perceptions of Mexican Americans’ competence and their influence in the group.  Lehn Benjamin finds that staff at nonprofit organizations who share control and establish common ground with their clients reduce status hierarchies between staff and clients.
 
This volume of RSF sheds light on status as a powerful social force which pervades our lives, and demonstrates its role in creating and preserving inequality.
 

Inmate labor fuels prisons. The incarcerated work in prison industries that collaborate with private corporations. Fair labor laws do not apply to prisons, where it is common for inmates to earn less than one dollar per hour. But involvement with the criminal justice system continues to shape and hinder the future employment and earnings of the formerly incarcerated long after they have been released. In this issue of RSF, edited by sociologist Sandra Susan Smith and legal scholar Jonathan Simon, an interdisciplinary group of scholars analyze how the criminal justice system acts as a de facto labor market institution by compelling or coercing labor from the justice-involved. 

The social and economic effects of criminal justice involvement are widespread, with almost seven million people under some form of direct supervision. The contributors to this issue examine how the criminal justice system affects the livelihood and families of both the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated. Cody Warner, Joshua Kaiser, and Jason Houle explore how “hidden sentences” --restricted access to voting rights, public housing, and professional licensing--negatively impact labor market outcomes for young adults with criminal records. Michele Cadigan and Garbriela Kirk look at the burden of court fees and fines, or legal financial obligations, that place a strain on the work commitments and resources of low-income people. Joe LaBriola sheds new light on how employment affects recidivism; he shows that parolees who find high-quality jobs, such as in the manufacturing industry, are less likely to return to prison than those employed in low-quality jobs. Noah Zatz and Michael Stoll demonstrate how the threat of imprisonment for nonpayment of child support coerces labor among noncustodial fathers, particularly African-American men. Allison Dwyer Emory and her coauthors show that previously incarcerated fathers are less likely to pay either formal or informal cash child support or offer in-kind assistance to their children’s mothers.

This issue of RSF is a timely contribution to the field of scholarly literature that illuminates the far and often destructive reach that the criminal justice system has on those whose lives it touches. It advances our understanding of how the system functions as a labor market institution and the price it extracts from those involved with it. 

In their seminal 1995 book Making Ends Meet: How Low-Income Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Employment, Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein laid bare the strategies and challenges of low-income single mothers who were struggling to provide for their families. Even in an era when cash welfare was a federal entitlement, these women struggled to get by. In the thirty years since the book’s publication, many single parents wrestle with volatility and precarious resources from work, informal and formal supports. In this double issue of RSF, economist Elizabeth O. Ananat, political scientist and public policy scholar Carolyn Y. Barnes, sociologists Sandra K. Danziger and Kathryn Edin, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine how the policy landscape has changed since welfare reform and how it impacts low-income single mothers’ ability to make ends meet today.

Issue 1 has 8 articles that examine how the traditional safety net has evolved and new supports that have been developed since Making Ends Meet. For example, Sarah K. Bruch and colleagues assess changes to the social safety net since welfare reform in the 1990s and find that benefits have become more exclusive, have more constraints, and are less generous. Kelley Fong and Nora McCarthy reveal that, in an attempt to decrease child maltreatment, the child welfare system increasingly provides material resources to system-involved parents, including in-kind donations and assistance accessing childcare. However, parents often avoid obtaining resources through the system because it opens them up to increased state surveillance. Heather D. Hill and colleagues show that access to paid family and medical leave (PFML) varies greatly for single mothers, with two-thirds of single mothers living in states without PMFL. For those who live in states with PFML, the accessibility and generosity of benefits vary greatly.

Issue 2 has 5 articles that look at lessons that can be learned from COVID Era policies, how single mothers currently try to make ends meet, and men’s contributions to families. For example, Natasha V. Pilkauskas and Kevin Bruey find that low-income single mothers, with and without employment, utilize a variety of public and private resources to make ends meet. Despite this, both groups face high levels of material hardship, including food and housing insecurity. Hope Harvey examines how members of doubled up households understand their economic and social relationships and reveals that there are often disagreements about shared resources, such as money and food. However, it is not just the precise contributions that cause conflict, but how the exchanges are interpreted within the context of household members’ relationships. Allison Dwyer Emory and colleagues show that nonresident fathers often have trouble making ends meet themselves and are unable to make up for the loss of cash support post-welfare reform.

This double issue of RSF showcases the persistence of precarity that low-income families face since Making Ends Meet.

Note: This copy refers to both issues of the journal double issue.

In their seminal 1995 book Making Ends Meet: How Low-Income Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Employment, Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein laid bare the strategies and challenges of low-income single mothers who were struggling to provide for their families. Even in an era when cash welfare was a federal entitlement, these women struggled to get by. In the thirty years since the book’s publication, many single parents wrestle with volatility and precarious resources from work, informal and formal supports. In this double issue of RSF, economist Elizabeth O. Ananat, political scientist and public policy scholar Carolyn Y. Barnes, sociologists Sandra K. Danziger and Kathryn Edin, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine how the policy landscape has changed since welfare reform and how it impacts low-income single mothers’ ability to make ends meet today.

Issue 1 has 8 articles that examine how the traditional safety net has evolved and new supports that have been developed since Making Ends Meet. For example, Sarah K. Bruch and colleagues assess changes to the social safety net since welfare reform in the 1990s and find that benefits have become more exclusive, have more constraints, and are less generous. Kelley Fong and Nora McCarthy reveal that, in an attempt to decrease child maltreatment, the child welfare system increasingly provides material resources to system-involved parents, including in-kind donations and assistance accessing childcare. However, parents often avoid obtaining resources through the system because it opens them up to increased state surveillance. Heather D. Hill and colleagues show that access to paid family and medical leave (PFML) varies greatly for single mothers, with two-thirds of single mothers living in states without PMFL. For those who live in states with PFML, the accessibility and generosity of benefits vary greatly.

Issue 2 has 5 articles that look at lessons that can be learned from COVID Era policies, how single mothers currently try to make ends meet, and men’s contributions to families. For example, Natasha V. Pilkauskas and Kevin Bruey find that low-income single mothers, with and without employment, utilize a variety of public and private resources to make ends meet. Despite this, both groups face high levels of material hardship, including food and housing insecurity. Hope Harvey examines how members of doubled up households understand their economic and social relationships and reveals that there are often disagreements about shared resources, such as money and food. However, it is not just the precise contributions that cause conflict, but how the exchanges are interpreted within the context of household members’ relationships. Allison Dwyer Emory and colleagues show that nonresident fathers often have trouble making ends meet themselves and are unable to make up for the loss of cash support post-welfare reform.

This double issue of RSF showcases the persistence of precarity that low-income families face since Making Ends Meet.

Note: This copy refers to both issues of the journal double issue.

A compelling study of the origins of racial conflict and violence in America.

“We’ll just be hanging out, partying. And somebody will say, ‘Hey, let’s go on a mission.’ That’s when you go looking for people who don’t belong in the neighborhood, and you beat ’em up. Sometimes we go out lookin’ for blacks to jump. Sometimes we look for anybody who ain’t supposed to be there.” —Sal, Avenue T Boys

For over ten years, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America has been an essential text for students studying the region. This second edition adds new material and brings the analysis up to date.

Race and ethnic identities are increasingly salient in Latin America. Peter Wade examines changing perspectives on Black and Indian populations in the region, tracing similarities and differences in the way these peoples have been seen by academics and national elites. Race and ethnicity as analytical concepts are re-examined in order to assess their usefulness.

This book should be the first port of call for anthropologists and sociologists studying identity in Latin America.

Located a mere fifteen minutes from Los Angeles, the San Gabriel Valley is an incubator for California's new ethnic politics. Here, Latinos and Asian Americans are the dominant groups. Politics are Latino-dominated, while a large infusion of Chinese immigrants and capital has made the San Gabriel Valley the center of the nation's largest Chinese ethnic economy. The white population, meanwhile, has dropped from an overwhelming majority in 1970 to a minority in 1990. 

Leland T. Saito presents an insider's view of the political, economic, and cultural implications of this ethnic mix. He examines how diverse residents of the region have worked to overcome their initial antagonisms and develop new, more effective political alliances. 

Tracing grassroots political organization along racial and ethnic lines, Race and Politics focuses on the construction of new identities in general and the panethnic affiliation "Asian American" in particular.

A radical rethinking of dark emotion as critical responses to capitalism, colonial violence, and authoritarian power.

Rage, Shame and Dread is a bold and unsettling exploration of three emotions that resist consolation, correction, or easy political use. In this triptych of essays, David Lloyd dwells with rage, shame, and dread not as states to be managed or redeemed, but as objectless, intransitive forces that interrupt social life and expose its underlying wrongness.

Reading rage as “sheer manifestation,” shame as a catastrophic rupture of self-relation, and dread as anticipation without an object, Lloyd traces how these unpromising emotions emerge from—and register—the violences of capitalism, colonialism, racialization, and authoritarian power. Drawing on Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Derrida, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Joseph Conrad, Oscar Wilde, and Søren Kierkegaard, the book moves between philosophy, literature, and political theory to challenge therapeutic and liberal accounts that treat these feelings as errors to be corrected or tools for socialization.

Rather than pathologizing these states, Lloyd reads them as signals of damaged social relations and as thresholds to alternative forms of life-in-common. At once philosophically rigorous and politically urgent, Rage, Shame and Dread offers a radical rethinking of feeling as a site of critique, resistance, and collective possibility.