Abstract Recognition of one’s positive qualities is fundamental to human dignity. Research in the cultural sociology of morality, worth, and evaluation has explored how individuals respond to stigmatization and moral devaluation, emphasizing the recognition claims that they formulate. However, less attention has been given to what happens when such claims are rejected. This study addresses this gap by examining elite philanthropy: a practice that forms part of claims by economic elites to moral worth, but which is also challenged by a critical public view. Analyzing how elite philanthropists account for such challenges, we identify a sequence of evaluations and devaluations whereby philanthropy is evaluated, the critical public view is devaluated, and the focus of the moral debate is shifted to other social issues. This sequence results in a recognition claim about the moral worth of philanthropy and in what we refer to as a negation claim, whereby social actors discredit the public view. Recognition and negation claims reflect two distinct, but not necessarily incompatible, ways in which social actors wrestle with moral devaluation. This distinction, we argue, is conceptually and analytically important for analyzing the responses of social actors to moral devaluation, and has implications for the study of dominance and symbolic inequality.

Abstract American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) people are often excluded from the sociology of race within the United States. To expand research on racialization, this article examines how AIAN individuals experience and navigate racialization through the concept of “street race.” Drawing on interviews with a diverse sample of 47 AIAN individuals living in urban settings nationally, I find that respondents’ experience an erasure of their Indigenous identity and their assumed street race to be “Asian,” “Middle Eastern,” “Black,” “Latinx/Spanish-speaking,” and “White.” These results varied by geography across the United States and demonstrate that a legal AIAN identity does not always match with the day-to-day encounters of street race.

ABSTRACT Families constitute vital sources of support to the approximately two million people currently incarcerated in the United States by contributing financial assistance, providing emotional support, and promoting desistance. Existing research on families focuses on the experiences of partners or children rather than parents or adult siblings, and particularly on how family support can reduce recidivism. This paper incorporates the theoretical approach of symbiotic harms, which emphasizes the flow of harms into and out of the criminal justice system. Drawing on observations of three national, virtual support groups and 21 in-depth interviews with family members, this study investigates shared experiences across the criminal justice system and agentic responses to harm, from small acts of resistance to activism. The data reveal symbiotic harms in four key areas: financial and medical burdens, emotional adjustments, status disclosure, and negative experiences within prison walls. This research addresses a question largely unanswered by the existing symbiotic harms literature on how agency is defined and exercised. The data illustrate an important case study of the meanings that support group participants attach to their practices of agency: self-care as empowerment, reflexive engagement with processes of stigmatization, strategies for counteracting harms, and reframing setbacks as blessings.

Though lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) youth face increased risk for mental health problems, research suggests that protective state-level legislation and school-level supports can reduce this risk. However, the effectiveness of state laws and school policies may depend on how they are enacted in schools, and particularly whether they are contested by local communities. To examine this idea, we compare ethnographic and interview data from 2019-2023 from two Colorado public school districts in different community contexts. We find that despite shared state laws, these districts construct LGBTQ+ inclusivity differently and that this difference is shaped, in part, by community politics. In the more liberal Ensley Public Schools, protective state laws are integrated into district policy and practices, and school staff are intentional and consistent about creating inclusivity for LGBTQ+ students. In the more conservative Field Public Schools, we find similar district policies, but staff are more constrained in cultivating LGBTQ+ inclusion due to community attitudes that contest support for LGBTQ+ students. We leverage these findings to consider how external community contexts shape the experience of state laws and associated policies for LGBTQ+ youth in schools, with implications for sociological theory and policy.

Abstract Research examining micro-level factors in European countries is well-established. However, little research explores how macro-level factors, such as institutional settings or labour market structures, shape working poverty. After reviewing the literature on macro-level determinants of in-work poverty, we classified these factors into two broad categories—institutional and structural—and examined their impact on in-work poverty rates across the EU. We conducted a panel regression analysis using data from 27-EU countries over the period 2009–2022. The results indicate that in-work poverty in the EU-27 is shaped by both institutional and structural macro-level factors. Fluctuations in the employment rates of specific population groups influence working poverty. The in-work poverty rate declines as youth employment rates increase, whereas higher employment rates among non-EU nationals, low-skilled individuals, and those employed in agriculture, forestry, and fishing are associated with an increase in in-work poverty in the EU. The part-time employment rate was found to be a contributing factor to the increase in in-work poverty. A larger share of the population leaving education early contributes to rising in-work poverty. Finally, our findings highlight that public expenditure on disability benefits has a positive effect on alleviating in-work poverty by providing crucial financial support to vulnerable households.

Abstract A robust body of research finds that incarceration jeopardizes post-release employment and earnings, and that these challenges are magnified for formerly incarcerated Black and Hispanic Americans relative to White Americans. Life course theory is often used to conceptualize the impact of a spell of incarceration, but the theory’s contextual component has been overlooked despite geographic variation in labor market opportunities. Place is also stratified by race and ethnicity, and Black and Hispanic Americans with a history of incarceration are more likely to reside in distressed communities than their White counterparts. Taken together, and extending prior research, we ask two questions: (1) To what extent does the local unemployment rate compound labor market challenges for individuals with a history of incarceration, and (2) are Black and Hispanic Americans with a history of incarceration disproportionately impacted by conditions of the local labor market? To do so, we draw on individual and county level data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) and employ an analytic strategy that treats individuals as their own control. Results indicate that labor market outcomes for formerly incarcerated persons are worse in higher unemployment areas than in areas with lower rates, and that the local labor market impact is more detrimental for Black Americans with a history of incarceration than for White Americans.

Abstract The victims of severe New York City blazes are most often immigrants, and the worst fires occur in neighborhoods with higher proportions of Black and Latinx residents. While race, socioeconomic status, and foreign-born characteristics have been established as fire risk factors, contemporary disparities in firehouse distribution at the neighborhood level remain an underexplored avenue of research. This study explores the following research question: To what extent are race, ethnicity, class, and foreign-born characteristics reflected in the distribution of firehouses within residential New York City census tracts? Using centroids in combination with census tract data in regression analyses, we find that ethno-racial composition is a significant factor, and that it is intertwined with class. Our analysis indicates that a higher percentage of Black and Asian residents is associated with greater distance to a firehouse and the relationship may be explained by class to a varying degree depending on neighborhood traits. Further, higher median household income is associated with closer proximity to a firehouse in predominantly white neighborhoods only. Overall, the analyses indicate how race relates to the distribution of firehouses in a global city where neighborhoods have been commodified.

ABSTRACT Whether and how trade impacts carbon emissions in Global North nations like the United States (U.S.) remains contested. Prior analyses focus on nation-states and rarely examine this relationship in subnational contexts. To fill this gap, I test a range of theories related to the trade-emissions nexus using U.S. state-level panel data from 2002–2019 and the half-panel jackknife fixed effects estimator. I examine whether trade intensity in the aggregate and delineated by industrial sector is associated with industrial CO2 emissions per capita and industrial emission intensity. I also employ moderation analysis to test whether the impact of trade is moderated by scale, compositional, and technique effects emphasized by the treadmill of production, ecological modernization, and factor endowment perspectives. I find that trade intensity in the aggregate is not associated with state-level emissions or emission intensity, but when disaggregated, it is associated with increased emissions and emission intensity in states more reliant on agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting, and mining exports. Trade is also moderated by compositional and scale effects, where trade effects are greater in states with more capital-intensive economies that experience higher rates of economic growth—supporting arguments made by the treadmill of production and factor endowment perspectives.

Abstract This paper introduces “weaponized waiting,” a newly-identified type of administrative burden inflicted upon families visiting loved ones in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities. Based on 40 in-depth interviews with family members and three years of ethnographic fieldwork in three Southern California facilities, this study argues that waiting is deployed as a bureaucratic tool to harm families. The act of waiting, regulated by opaque rules—from protocols that organize transfers of detained people to dress codes that govern visitors’ apparel—emerges as a form of bureaucratic violence that is both punitive and disciplinary. The findings reveal that when visitation policies obligate relatives to wait for contact with each other, this amplifies damage to families already burdened by the threat of deportation. Further, waiting is weaponized at both macro and micro levels. At the macro level, facility policies signal hostility, while otherwise being unresponsive and unaccountable. At the micro level, waiting is extended at the discretion of individual bureaucrats whose choices frequently appear arbitrary in the eyes of visitors. Consequently, not only do visitors lose control over their time, the resulting separation from their detained loved ones produces feelings of powerlessness, anger, and despair.

ABSTRACT Black women and white men occupy opposing positions in intersecting racial and gender hierarchies, influencing their partner dynamics. The present study centers gendered racism experienced by Black women in interracial relationships with white men and examines how partner support can mitigate or uphold patterns of dominance. Eighty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2021 with Black women previously or currently in a relationship with a white man. Of these interviews, 45 percent (N = 37) state having partners who mishandled the gendered racism interviewees experienced. Yet 50 percent (N = 41) of interviewees feel supported by their white male partner(s) and explain what support looks like in response to experiencing or discussing gendered racism. Black women who experience their partner discounting gendered racism and/or avoiding defending them believe this is detrimental to their relationship. Conversely, Black women who believe their partners stand up to racism and educate themselves feel supported. We draw on a Black feminist framework to analyze Black women’s experiences within a society that upholds white supremacy and masculinity. Black women’s explanations of partner support allow us to broadly conceptualize how minoritized partners receive interracial support and navigate their positions within race x gender social hierarchies.