Since its coining in 1971, the concept of the “informal sector” has been used to draw scholarly, political, and philanthropic attention to hundreds of millions of workers who lack basic labor protections. But as the term proliferated, so too did its detractors. Critics claim that the label of “informal” homogenizes the world's poor and distorts understandings of the sources of and solutions to their

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Rates of food insecurity skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, doubling overall and tripling among households with children. Even before the pandemic, the rate of food insecurity in the United States was “unusually high” compared to other rich democracies, and rates have not improved substantially over the last 25 years. What explains the lack of progress in addressing food insecurity? This article

Over the last 30 years, intersectionality has become a prominent concept, but in social movement scholarship, its adoption has yet been limited. So far, the concept is primarily employed to analyze the mobilization of women of color and other gendered mobilizations. In this article, I argue that intersectionality matters for all social movements—both as an analytic and as a political strategy. It is

Critics express concerns over the theoretical pluralism in theories of the state and state power. This paper explores how organizational theories can provide more focus to theories of the state and state power thereby increasing their explanatory power. After summarizing concerns raised by political sociologists over pluralism in theories of the state and state power, the analysis focuses on existing

Many contemporary workers struggle to manage paid work and family responsibilities, leading scholars to explore mechanisms contributing to conflict between these two domains. Such examinations often center on pinpointing specific factors that explain variation in work-family conflict, but these studies have less to say about how some occupational contexts create overwhelming demands for workers. In

The tragic killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police resulted in hundreds of thousands of protestors marching in the streets demanding change. The call for change criticized the killing of Blacks by law enforcement and challenged White supremacy as an institution of social control and racial violence. A key component of the marches and protests was a message to the residents of the United

This article reviews the literature on the reproductive justice social movement and provides an overview of its main theorical and empirical foundations and contributions. It begins by tracing the emergence of reproductive justice, grounding it in longstanding histories of resistance and Black feminist theorizing. It highlights intersectionality as a social movement strategy and tactic embraced by

I call for a globally informed sociology of comparative placemaking that integrates historical and contemporary processes and includes the ephemeral, institutional, and personal. By placemaking, I am referring to the explicit or tacit cooperation among people to create, maintain, and give meaning to places in space through bodily occupation given differential resources and constraints. I review select

The rapid aging of the immigrant population in the United States has drawn increasing scholarly attention to studying the kinship support networks of older immigrants. Despite the common stereotype of older immigrants as passive dependents of their families and the receiving society, this review highlights their active negotiations of ties to adult children as they manage family relations and secure

An interdisciplinary debate emerged in the 1990s about the nature of homeless governance in neoliberal cities. Contributions to this discussion have interrogated the form, function, and legitimacy of contemporary homeless management. Urban scholars have differentiated three techniques of homeless governance: punishment, support, and discipline. A subset of scholarship has defined punitive governance

Contrary to anti-black, cultural deficit logics that frame Black parenting as tied to the reproduction of social disadvantage, research shows that Black parents, and other parents of color, are agentic as they parent in direct response to the dominant racial order of the United States. In this paper, I review this scholarship and primarily focus on how Black parents approach raising children in the

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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected nearly all the aspects of society since it's onset in early 2020. In addition to infecting and taking the lives of millions of global citizens, the pandemic has fundamentally changed family and work patterns. The pandemic and associated mitigation measures have increased the unemployment rates, amplified health risks for essential workers required to work on-site

This article reviews the emerging literature on the negotiation of home-related feelings, claims, and practices in the public urban sphere, under the rubric of homemaking in the public. This contributes to a better sociological understanding of home and illuminates long-debated societal questions such as the interaction between majority and minority groups and the shifting boundaries between what is

In this essay, I describe and evaluate the contemporary debate over support for Confederate icons. This debate is often stylized as “heritage” versus “hatred.” In this debate, one side alleges that their favored Confederate symbols represent pride in Southern-Confederate identity, whereas the other urges that Confederate symbols represent racial hatred and white supremacy. I argue that the “heritage

Several decades of interdisciplinary research have demonstrated the benefits of racially and ethnically integrated K12 schools. However, there is still much we do not know about what happens inside diverse schools that lead to these outcomes. In this article, we argue that the study of diversity in higher education, with its greater focus on internal institutional dynamics and a broader range of outcomes

Political science scholarship argues that women's underrepresentation in American politics stems from a persistent shortage of female candidates. Women are less likely to run because they often perceive individual and structural obstacles that negatively impact their electoral interest. Such barriers remain intact, yet thousands of women have signaled their interest in running for office since the

In recent decades, accelerating processes of globalization and an increase in economic inequality in most of the world's countries have raised the question of the emergence of a new bourgeoisie integrated at the global level, sometimes described as a global super-bourgeoisie. This group would be distinguished by its unequaled level of wealth and global interconnectedness, its transnational ubiquity

As income inequality in the United States has reached an all-time high, commentators from across the political spectrum warn about the social implications of these economic changes. America, they fear, is “coming apart” as the gap between the rich and poor grows into a fault line. This paper provides a comprehensive review of empirical scholarship in sociology, education, demography, and economics

Intersectionality emerged in the border space between social movements and academic politics as a means of better understanding and confronting interlocking systems of oppression. For scholars studying social movements, it offers a framework for better understanding the power dynamics of movements (the inclusions and exclusions). It is also something to be studied. Women of color, and other groups

The following article explores the different ways art sociologists investigate art that is based in the participatory arts. The aim is to shift the empirical focus to the art practice, which speaks for itself, and to place the work of the artist and all who cooperate or collaborate in the making of the artwork at the center of sociological analysis. By allowing the artist to speak fully about their

Until recently, western TV programming rarely featured sexual or ethnic minority members; if present, their representation was mostly negative. Increasingly, though, diverse characters start to play likeable protagonists as well. Thus, television can promote negative diversity attitudes and, at other times, positive ones. The present article reviews and connects theories and research from sociology

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This article reviews contemporary intercultural scholarship by examining published papers in 16 communication journals (5 of them were dedicated intercultural journals) between 2007 and 2018. The analysis found that the number of manuscripts published in 12 years (n = 191, or approximately 2.5% of 7452 published papers) on South Asian issues and populations is meager. Based on the reading of the intercultural

Maternalist framing has been a consistent part of a long history of powerful, often successful organizing for environmental protection and justice. Yet today's calls on individuals to simultaneously engage in proenvironmental behavior and to protect themselves from environmental threats through consumption have mobilized maternal discourse in a way that is likely demobilizing in the long run. Indeed

Historical contributions of Black youth voices and actions are overlooked from many of the narratives of youth civic engagement (YCE) literature. Specifically, the histories and stories of African American youth in the United States and Black Caribbean youth in the Anglophone Caribbean. The shared socio and political obstacles these particular groups have encountered throughout history shaped similar

For decades, U.S. immigration policy debates have centered on creating a merit‐based system limiting entry to high‐skilled immigrants. Yet the emphasis on merit‐based immigration ignores the fact that high‐skilled immigrants already enter the United States in merit‐based immigration assume high‐skilled immigrants benefit the U.S. economy because they are better able than low‐skilled immigrants to translate

In metropolitan areas with significant numbers of Latinx and Black people, Santiago (1991) hypothesized that Latinx groups may “buffer” white neighborhoods from Black ones. Farley and Frey (1994, https://doi.org/10.2307/2096131) subsequently suggested that Latinx and Asian groups provide a social or spatial “buffer” that enables White and Black neighborhood coresidence. In predominantly White spaces

Privatized punishment—in which nonstate actors carry out state‐mandated criminal punishments—has developed into a common practice since its rise in the 1980s. Many disciplines, including criminology, political science, public administration, and economics, have examined its use over the past four decades. However, privatized punishment has not garnered much attention in sociology. This is surprising

We examine the modes of intervention of global public intellectuals at times of crisis. In critical situations, public intellectuals take positions on matters that affect the societies they inhabit and, eventually, all humanity. To this end, they take advantage of the opportunities afforded by new communications technologies, establishing an important distinction between the “analog” intellectual (who

In the last few years, the popularity of veganism has surged. Current literature on the cultural practice, which situates it within a social movements framework, cannot adequately explain this meteoric rise. A better approach is to view veganism as an emerging lifestyle movement based on individual consumption rather than political protest. After situating veganism within the literature on animal rights

This paper provides a comprehensive review of space- and place-based criminology, with a focus on the relationship between crime, the built environment, land use, and/or physical geography, through sociological and critical geography lenses. An historical overview of major criminological and spatial theories and contributors is presented before examining the current state of the field. In honor of

In recent years, prison strikes and controversies have brought public attention to the systemic problems with prison labor in the United States. Such labor often exploits people who are imprisoned to do work that is vital to society—including firefighting, farming, or manufacturing consumer goods—with wages that can be less than a dollar per hour in highly coercive working conditions. Although there

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This article seeks to review recent research and scholarship in the sociology of Catholicism, as well as focusing on areas needing greater attention. In taking stock of this literature, I identify institutional change, church‐society interactions, institutional resources and influence, and the church as international actor as four key topics that have engaged scholarship. I review existing research

While much of the sociological scholarship on intimacy has been understood in the normative sense of foregrounding and supporting human closeness, this article points to the role intimacy has as a sociological concept to better understand regulatory ties between the subject and the institution. While subject and institution are treated by modernity as distinct entities, separated by the boundary between

Early theorists understood the family as a key institution in the production of gender and sexuality. In this paper, I trace the development of this line of thought and review parents' role in shaping children's gender and sexuality over the life course. I first describe the three most prominent theoretical frameworks used to locate parents in these studies: psychoanalysis, socialization, and interactional

Increasingly recognized as a chronic condition that can endure across the life course, childhood attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with less stable family formation and more strain around intimate unions (dating, cohabitation and marriage) and parenthood. This article reviews and evaluates multidisciplinary research on childhood ADHD, intimate unions and parenthood, with

“Wine mom” discourse encourages American women to self‐deprecatingly bond over the stressors of parenting and touts alcohol use as necessary means for coping and escapism. Before the added stress of the COVID‐19 pandemic, whereby alcohol sales and consumption increased in the United States, rates of heavy drinking and alcohol‐related illnesses among US women have been steadily increasing. Exceeding

The family is often described as the foundation of Latino immigrant communities. Scholars interested in the political activism of Latino immigrants in the United States have consequently sought to examine the relationship between the family and recruitment to social movement participation. Overall, this research focuses on how the family can promote Latinos' political activism. However, less is known

In response to the crisis of racist disparities in maternal mortality, many activists are pushing for increased access to birth doulas for Black women. As states and municipalities respond by incorporating doulas into hospital settings with increasingly common requirements for doula certification, it is more important than ever to investigate the role of doulas, and how that role might change under

In the past decade, social scientists and bioethicists have produced a significant body of work tracking the technical, legal, ethical, and sociocultural development and implications of human egg freezing. What began as a treatment to “preserve” the fertility of cancer patients has transformed into a technology enabling delayed childbearing. We provide an overview of four research areas that have received

Being undocumented is strongly correlated with low wages, employment in high risk occupations, and poor healthcare access. We know surprisingly little about the social lives of older undocumented adults despite the vast literature about youth and young undocumented migrants. Literature about the immigrant health paradox casts doubts on the argument that unequal social conditions translate to poorer

Sociologists have contributed greatly to our understanding of how systems of oppression operate and work together to produce injustice. However, they have paid considerably less theoretical and empirical attention to fatphobia and ableism compared to some other systems of oppression. Worse yet, noncritical sociological research on fat bodies and disabled bodyminds has often contributed to the perpetuation

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Recent scholarship in the sociological subfields of culture and immigration offers several promising directions for studying how people experience the world in embodied ways and move through and across boundaries. Yet, the lack of overlap between fields has left numerous theoretical angles unexplored. In this review, I consider the limited existing scholarship at the intersection of migration and the

Over the past 30 years, we have been witnessing a rise in incivility policing across western but also non‐western cities. The term “incivility policing” refers to bans and exclusion aimed at drinking alcohol, begging, loitering, sitting in public, and many other kinds of subcriminal conduct. Scholars have observed an increasing readiness to demand legal “solutions” aimed against these kinds of conduct

Considerable research exists that examines attitudes toward migrants. Most studies are quantitative, relying on surveys or survey experiments, but a growing body of literature explores such attitudes from a qualitative perspective. At the same time, the study of symbolic boundaries and how people use cultural repertoires of meanings to draw distinctions between “us” and “them” is increasing. This review

Men's relationships to gender‐based violence (GBV) have long been an area of sociological inquiry, but until recently men have primarily been framed as perpetrators of violence against women. More recently, research on men and GBV has broadened to include studying men as victims/survivors, as investigators and law enforcement officers, as passive or active bystanders, and as allies in working to address

In spite of recognition that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer+ (LGBQ+) young adults face challenges associated with their sexual identities, research on inequality in education has only recently begun examining their academic experiences and outcomes in college. Prior work has mainly focused on social and extracurricular experiences during college or academic outcomes among LGBQ+ students in K‐12

Over the last two decades, academic debates around neoliberalism in Latin America have shifted from evaluations of the drawbacks and virtues of the application of neoliberal policies for achieving socioeconomic development, towards discussions imagining and implementing alternatives. After thirty years of neoliberal reform, even neoliberal advocates have increasingly recognised the pernicious effects

Organizational theory and research has been enormously generative for political sociologists, if not always as fully centered as it might be, relative to broader notions of political power, economic resources, culture, and their interplay. This review both calls attention to the ways that organizational theory continues to inform political sociology and sets an agenda for how this interchange can be

Interest in applying sociological tools to analysing the social nature, antecedents and consequences of artificial intelligence (AI) has been rekindled in recent years. However, for researchers new to this field of enquiry, navigating the expansive literature can be challenging. This paper presents a practical way to help these researchers to think about, search and read the literature more effectively

Diverse coalitions hold great potential for social movements, but they also face tremendous challenges. In this article, I review the literature on diverse alliances with a focus on how trust, commitment, and ultimately, solidarity can be developed and sustained across divides. The article begins by discussing the needs of diverse alliances to build trust and commitment, and the coalitional characteristics

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Through constitutional amendments and case law, the United States citizens receive privacy protections. These same protections do not exist for individuals incarcerated in prisons and jails. Instead, their privacy rights are regularly replaced by larger institutional concerns for security, safety, and control. Such privacy violation measures may include electronic surveillance, recording of phone calls

Over a fifth of California's public schools' students have limited access to college and career pathways due to being labeled an “English‐language learner (ELLs).” As reported by the California Department of Education, in the 2017–2018 school year, of the over 6.2 million students in California, nearly 1.3 million students are categorized as ELLs. The ELL label states students “whose difficulties in

Although the concept of homonationalism is still relatively new, it has already undergone substantial reformulation from its original conception. Moreover, the concept has been the subject of substantial debate. Originally formulated by Jasbir Puar specifically in a US context, the concept sought to capture the reciprocal relationship between LGBTQ + movements/identities and nationalism/imperialism