A Bottom-Up Union Revival?
Though union density numbers do not indicate that labor has yet turned around its decades of retreat, it is clear that workers and labor unions in the US do have wind in their sails. From the unionization breakthroughs at major corporations like Starbucks to the ambitious strikes and union drives of the United Auto Workers across the South, the labor movement is wresting high profile wins and generating a high degree of publicity as well as momentum. And on a local level, a slew of struggles in a wide range of industries and services similarly testify to a new mood of bottom-up worker assertiveness.
Can this labor uptick turn into lasting labor revitalization? What are the main lessons of recent struggles for other unions and movements interested in following suit? And what does this all mean for the struggle for economic and racial justice in the US?
(Session Organizer) Barry Eidlin, McGill University; (Session Organizer) Eric Benjamin Blanc, New York University; (Presider) Barry Eidlin, McGill University; (Panelist) Ruth Milkman, CUNY-Graduate Center; (Panelist) Casey Moore, Starbucks Workers United; (Panelist) Michelle Valentin Nieves, Amazon Labor Union; (Panelist) Chris Brooks, United Auto Workers; (Panelist) Eric Benjamin Blanc, New York University; (Panelist) Barry Eidlin, McGill University
Burn, Baby Burn: Burn-out, Quiet Quitting, and the Great Negotiation
Burnout isn’t a new concept. But in recent years, a growing sense of burnout among workers has led to an entirely new vocabulary of workplace dissatisfaction including ‘quit lit,’ ‘quiet quitting,’ ‘rage applying’, and the Great Resignation/Renegotiation. Are these old dissatisfactions simply dressed up in #Worktok terms or a new phenomenon that may lead to a rebalancing in the work work-life equations? How does this burnout differ among older versus younger workers, and salaried or professional workers versus those who are low-wage or gig-based? This panel discussion brings together a unique set of researchers who study the four-day workweek, burn-out among medical professionals, work-family conflict among immigrants, and the how cultural narratives about work and being “a good worker” support unequal workforce processes.
(Session Organizer) Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; (Presider) Ken Cai Kowalski, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; (Panelist) Tania M. Jenkins, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; (Panelist) Wen Fan, Boston College; (Panelist) Shirin Montazer, Wayne State University; (Panelist) Alejandro Márquez, University of South Florida; (Panelist) Erin A. Cech, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Cooperatives and Employee Ownership
In a world where traditional business models dominate, cooperatives and employee ownership present alternative structures that prioritize collective decision-making, shared prosperity, and sustainable growth. This panel delves into the transformative potential of cooperatives and employee-owned enterprises in fostering economic resilience and social equity.
Cooperatives and employee ownership models have gained prominence as viable alternatives to conventional corporate structures. Rooted in principles of democracy, equality, and community, these models empower workers by granting them ownership stakes and a voice in organizational governance. The panelists discuss their work and the socio-economic impacts of cooperatives and employee ownership.
(Session Organizer) Joan S.M. Meyers, California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo; (Presider) Joan S.M. Meyers, California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo; (Panelist) Ed Carberry, University of Massachusetts Boston; (Panelist) Katherine Sobering, University of North Texas; (Panelist) Sanjay Pinto, Cornell University; (Panelist) Joyce Rothschild, Virginia Tech
Cultures and Meanings of Work in the Precarious Age
This panel will explore the evolving cultures and meanings of work amidst increasing worker precarity in the United States. Recent trends have seen a significant rise in unionization efforts alongside considerable repression of initiatives aimed at improving work-life balance and enhancing diversity and inclusion. In response, this discussion will focus on themes such as the consequences of platform capitalism, overwork, the reimagining of ideal worker norms through the lenses of race, class, gender, and age, and workers’ efforts to resist oppression at micro, meso, and macro levels (from the Great Resignation to #HotLaborSummer). Panelists will approach these topics from various perspectives, including broader themes of racial capitalism and neoliberalism to provide a comprehensive understanding of how work is being redefined and reproduced in contemporary society. The session aims to offer insights into the causes of these changes, their implications for individuals and organizations, and potential pathways forward.
(Session Organizer) Jasmine Hill, University of California-Los Angeles; (Presider) Jasmine Hill, University of California-Los Angeles; (Panelist) Lindsey D. Cameron, University of Pennsylvania; (Panelist) Ofer Sharone, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; (Panelist) Erin Kelly, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; (Panelist) Jennifer M Silva, Indiana University
Drugs, Money, and Work
Drug markets have changed substantially in recent years. The throes of the opioid crisis have cultivated a burgeoning illicit drug market, while legalization and decriminalization of marijuana and other psychotropic substances (e.g., psybicilin, MDMA) in certain jurisdictions have created opportunities for legitimate employment and grey market industries. These changes in drug market legality and politics intersect with an influx of persons formerly incarcerated for drug crimes reintegrating into society–and looking for work–following rapid drug policy reform aimed at shrinking bloated prison populations. The session brings together perspectives from criminology, economic sociology, public policy, and work and occupations to survey the impacts of recent changes in drug market policy and politics on the sociological contours of drug markets, drug crime, and drug use. Topics covered substance include substance user reintegration, online drug trade, the grey market for hemp-derived cannabinoids, and neighborhood dynamics of drug trade.
(Session Organizer) Scott W. Duxbury, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; (Presider) Scott W. Duxbury, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
- Vice for Sale: Neighborhood Conditions and Illicit Markets – Chris M. Smith, University of Toronto
- Drug sales on encrypted chat platforms – Kim Moeller, Malmo University
- Hemp markets and policy – Mark Pawson, Purdue University
- Drug courts, employment, and wages – Sadé Lindsay, Cornell University
Education and Stratification in the Era of Generative AI
Generative artificial intelligence has stormed K12 and higher education. Some, such as those advocating for AI-backed tutors and assistance for English Language Learners, see promise for reducing educational equity (e.g., Khanmigo.ai). Others, such as those pointing to racial and gender biases in AI, suggest it can exacerbate educational inequality (Benjamin 2019). More broadly, scholars have investigated the ways in which technology in education can unwittingly exacerbate stratification in ways that go beyond differences in material resources (Puckett 2022; Rafalow 2020; Warschauer 2019). Some have proposed guidelines to ensure that technological developments are used and implemented equitably (Stonier et al. 2023). In this session panelists will discuss the growth of generative AI in education, with a specific focus on implications for educational stratification.
(Session Organizer and Presider) Natasha Warikoo, Tufts University; (Panelist) Steve Hoffman, University of Toronto; (Panelist) Cassidy Puckett, Emory University; (Panelist) Sepehr Vakil, Northwestern University; (Panelist) Renzhe Yu, Teachers College Columbia University
Firms, Occupations, and Markets
How does social structure shape the economy? Sociological research on the building blocks of economic organization—firms, occupations and markets—promises micro foundations to compete with neoclassical economic theory. It also links sociology to the interdisciplinary revival of radical political economy. However, it faces two limitations. First, economic sociology was launched against a narrow version of neoclassical economics, far from the attention to market power and imperfect information that defines modern economics. Second, economic sociology neglected distribution, which sidelined it from a sociology increasingly focused on inequality. In this panel, we discuss recent sociological research on firms, occupations and markets. What are the core sociological insights that can animate a new research program on the economy? How do these issues connect to substantive outcomes like income inequality, economic insecurity, political conflict and racial inequality?
(Presider) Nathan Wilmers, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; (Panelist) Carly Knight, New York University; (Panelist) Luis Flores, Harvard University; (Panelist) Matthew Clair, Stanford University; (Panelist) Georg Rilinger, MIT Sloan School of Management; (Session Organizer) Nathan Wilmers, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Generative AI and the Future of Work
Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) is posited to significantly impact the future of work, labor markets, and organizations. While there is a lot of interest in the popular press about Gen AI and its potential socioeconomic impacts, empirical research on the topics is lagging behind. This session brings together scholars who examine different facets of the impact of AI on the changing nature of work, organizations, labor markets, skills and expertise, and workplace inequality. This session will highlight cutting-edge and conceptual works on this topic and facilitate a dialogue with audiences. Through research presentations and interactive panel discussions, we seek to advance scholarship in this area of research while simultaneously building community.
(Session Organizer) Arvind Karunakaran, Stanford University; (Presider) Arvind Karunakaran, Stanford University; (Panelist) Ya-Wen Lei, Harvard University; (Panelist) Lindsey D. Cameron, University of Pennsylvania; (Panelist) Benjamin Shestakofsky, University of Pennsylvania; (Panelist) Hatim Rahman, Northwestern University
I’ll Labor How I Choose: Queering the Framework of Futuristic Laboring Practices
The future of work is one in which people’s labor must constitute body autonomy. For this proposed thematic session, a bodily autonomy perspective of work seeks to advance analyses of how people labor in manners that correspond to their identity, abilities/disabilities, or political and social ideas around liberation. Broadly defined, this includes scholarship and research around sex work, entrepreneur endeavors, care work, bodywork, micro-businesses, organizing, etc., and centers on the experiences and choices of historically marginalized workers – nonbinary, trans, immigrant, differently abled/disabled, and racialized, to combat and challenge external subjugation within a capitalist structure. By engaging in such analyses, what is realized is an understanding of the multiple ways in which people are trying to survive capitalism and other forms of power (i.e., racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, etc.) to define their existence, capabilities, and work on their terms. Because capitalism reproduces devasting forms of dispossessed, commodified, and exploitative labor, we must highlight how workers themselves are changing the parameters of work that create pathways for more protected material livelihoods and fully actualized forms of selfhood.
(Session Organizer and Presider) Christopher Rogers, California State University, Sacramento; (Panelist) Christopher Rogers, California State University, Sacramento; (Panelist) Michelle Marie Christian, University of Tennessee-Knoxville; (Panelist) Celeste Curington, Boston University; (Panelist) Ghassan Moussawi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; (Panelist) Jullanar Zakiyyah Williams, University of California Merced; (Panelist) Liat Ben-Moshe, University of Illinois-Chicago
Inequalities at Work
This thematic session focuses on employment inequalities at work. While there is a growing literature documenting inequalities in hiring, it is important to understand how inequalities are produced, reproduced, or challenged on the job after the point of hire. Panelists will discuss field studies that address inequalities at work by gender, race, social class, disability status, sexuality, and the intersections of multiply marginalized identities. We embrace an interdisciplinary approach and bring together scholars using qualitative and quantitative approaches from sociology, management, political science, and law.
(Session Organizer) Lauren Rivera, Northwestern University; (Presider) Kylie Jiwon Hwang, Columbia Business School; (Panelist) Mabel Abraham, Columbia University; (Panelist) Erin A. Cech, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; (Panelist) Jennifer Merluzzi, George Washington University; (Panelist) David Nicholas Pettinicchio, University of Toronto; (Panelist) Katherine Weisshaar, Northwestern University; (Panelist) Kevin Woodson, University of Richmond
Intersecting Anti-Blackness at Work
Intersectionality theory illuminates how multiple dimensions of identity—such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability—intersect to shape individuals’ experiences and opportunities in society. This panel brings together intersectionality expert scholars to critically analyze the manifestations of anti-Blackness within organizational settings and to propose actionable steps toward dismantling barriers and promoting equity in the workplace.
(Session Organizer) Taura Taylor, Morehouse College; (Presider) Taura Taylor, Morehouse College; (Panelist) Glenda M. Flores, University of California Irvine; (Panelist) Enobong (Anna) Branch, Rutgers University-New Brunswick; (Panelist) Kimberle Crenshaw, Columbia University and UCLA
Latinx Professionals: An Intersectional Lens on Professional Pathways
How are Latinx professionals managing their careers amidst the complex policy climate? Historically, Latinx labor force participation has investigated the relationship between migration policy, worker rights, and migrant social and economic outcomes with a tendency to focus on low-income manual labor. However, a growing number of studies examine the experiences of college-educated Latinx professionals. Together, the rapidly growing and class-diverse Latinx populations in the U.S., the relatively young age of Latinx populations, the growing number of Latinxs obtaining college and professional degrees, and policy and scholarly debates regarding who fits within the “Latino/x/e” category raise the following question: what can the experience of Latinx professionals teach us about the structural changes within workplaces, the contentious policies around immigration and workplace diversity, and the global political economy? The panelists present varied case studies to answer different dimensions of this question. The future of work would be incomplete without detailing the complex experiences of Latinx professionals in different work contexts.
(Session Organizer) Melissa Victoria Abad, Stanford University; (Presider) Melissa Victoria Abad, Stanford University
- Panethnicity in the Professions: The Importance of Disaggregating Latinidades in Workplaces – Glenda M. Flores, University of California Irvine
- Middle-Class Latinxs’ Work-Related Lessons to Their Children – Lorena Garcia, University of Illinois-Chicago
- Latino STEM Pathways: Education, Professionalization, and Community – José A. Muñoz, California State University-San Bernardino
- Marginalization at Work: Latinx Professionals Entering Entrepreneurship – Karina Santellano, Arizona State University-Tempe
- How Afro-Latinx Professionals Navigate Ethnoracial Exclusions – Pamela Zabala Ortiz, Boston University
New Approaches to the Job Matching Process
The matching of people and jobs has broad consequences for social and economic inequality. In this session, scholars will discuss innovative ways of theorizing and analyzing job matching processes. This session will tackle some of the deepest and most challenging topics in understanding varying aspects of the job matching process, including bias and discrimination as well and the broader role of the social, political, and economic context.
(Session Organizer) David Pedulla, Harvard University; (Presider) David Pedulla, Harvard University; (Panelist) Adina Sterling, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business; (Panelist) Koji Chavez, Indiana University-Bloomington; (Panelist) Adam Reich, Columbia University; (Panelist) Naomi F. Sugie, University of California-Irvine; (Panelist) Lauren Rivera, Northwestern University
New Sociological Approaches to Understanding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
This thematic session focuses on new approaches to understanding diversity, equity, and inclusion in relation to the 2025 ASA theme—the future of work. Panelists will discuss DEI-related phenomena from a work and organizations perspective, focusing on racialized expertise, racialized emotions, flexible work policies, and broader topics around organizations and inequality. We embrace an interdisciplinary approach to organizational DEI issues and bring scholars conducting DEI research in sociology, management, labor relations, and human resources.
(Session Organizer) Sandra Portocarrero, London School of Economics; (Presider) James Carter, Cornell University; (Panelist) Vanessa Conzon, Boston College; (Panelist) Rohini Jalan, McGill University; (Panelist) Erin Kelly, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; (Panelist) Lauren Rivera, Northwestern University; (Panelist) Daniel Fisher, University of Sussex
Not working: Life Without a Job
Structural unemployment is a global and growing phenomenon. This panel will bring together sociologists who study prime working age adults who live on the margins of paid work. Invited panelists will discuss how the people they study survive without jobs that pay living wages. What alternative sources of income are available to them? How does the availability of these alternatives vary by race, gender, and class? By exploring current alternatives to working for a living with an eye to inequality, this panel will contribute valuable lessons for forging a future post-work society, contributing to what Kathi Weeks (2011) has called “post-work imaginaries”—the effort to identify and develop new approaches to distributing vital resources that do not involve waged labor.
(Session Organizer and Presider) Christine L. Williams, University of Texas-Austin; (Panelist) Jennifer Sherman, Washington State University; (Panelist) Joseph Crampah Ewoodzie, Davidson College; (Panelist) Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; (Panelist) Sharla Berry, California State University-Long Beach
Opportunities and Barriers in Today’s World of Work: Democratizing Work and Ownership
How can we reimagine the future of work to be more equal and equitable? How can workers democratize work and ownership? Drawing from their extensive research on enacting workers’ rights, democratizing work, and building sustainability communities, the panelists will reflect on the insights gleamed from studying real-world efforts to reimagine what is possible in the world of work. Topics will include the opportunities and challenges that workers, organizers, and activists face in making more equitable working arrangements; the intersections of race, nationality, class, and gender in shaping these efforts; and the key takeaways for future efforts to reimagine how work can be more inclusive, affirming, and equitable.
(Session Organizer) Megan Tobias Neely, Copenhagen Business School; (Presider) Megan Tobias Neely, Copenhagen Business School; (Panelist) Shannon Marie Gleeson, Cornell University, ILR School; (Panelist) Joan S.M. Meyers, California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo; (Panelist) Katherine Sobering, University of North Texas; (Panelist) Monica Bhatia, Washington State University
Organizing Black and Immigrant Labor in the Energy Transition
Labor is a pivotal and vexed question in the effort to mitigate climate change. There is growing global momentum driving a shift from petroleum-based to renewable energy, including increasing investment across the United States. Yet, as the energy transition takes shape, labor rights and opportunities remain in question. Renewable energy can be extractive, offering few local jobs or community benefits, or relying on pre-existing exploitative labor structures. For instance, it is not a coincidence that the US “battery belt” is contiguous with the historic Black Belt or that renewables often exploit the segmented immigrant labor market. Meanwhile, some entrenched labor interests have resisted energy transition, as a threat to historically unionized sectors. A just transition demands both climate change mitigation and equity.
This panel raises a series of pressing questions about how energy transition will impact workers and the underemployed and how such groups may advocate for themselves in the process. For instance: 1) What would it take to mobilize immigrant and racially marginalized workers to insist on training, jobs, and community benefits from this multi-billion-dollar industry? 2) How can a place like California – where policies seem to support just transition – compete in the global economy while modeling equitable approaches to renewable energy? How might other places integrate labor advocacy into an emergent transition? 3) How might workers’ rights, racial justice, immigrants’ rights, and public health intertwine in workers’ effort to claim their place in the climate transition?
(Session Organizer) Abigail L. Andrews, University of California-San Diego; (Panelist) Edward Orozco Flores, University of California-Merced; (Panelist) Daniela Flores, Imperial Valley Equity and Justice Coalition; (Panelist) Raul Pacheco Vega, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) Sede México; (Presider) Abigail L. Andrews, University of California-San Diego; (Panelist) Andrea Nadia Kvietok, University of California-San Diego; (Panelist) Michael Mendez, University of California, Irvine; (Panelist) Tracy Perkins, Arizona State University; (Discussant) Luis Flores, Harvard University
Platform Work
The digital revolution has begun to transform the nature of work in far reaching ways. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of platform work, which uses algorithms to manage the provision of labor services, usurping the role of organizations staffed by humans. This session is devoted to theoretical and empirical implications of this shift, which threatens to deepen the inequalities that capitalism has historically produced.
(Presider) Steven Vallas, Northeastern University; (Discussant) Angèle Christin, Stanford University; (Session Organizer) Steven Vallas, Northeastern University
- On Algorithmic Wage Discrimination – Veena Dubal, UC Hastings College of the Law
- Algorithmic Management and New Class Relations – David Stark, Columbia University
- Gender as a Technology of the Gig Economy – Julia B. Ticona, University of Pennsylvania
Racism and Identity Taxation in and Beyond Academia: The Future of Equity Work for Marginalized People in the US Work Force
This session examines how the extra labor associated with racism continues to affect marginalized people’s experiences in and beyond academia. Amado Padilla (1994) coined the term “cultural taxation” to describe “diversity-related” service burdens expected of faculty of color that were not expected of white colleagues. Tiffany Joseph and Laura Hirshfield (2012) extended Padilla’s concept, developing “identity taxation” to describe how intersecting marginalized identities increased taxation for Black women, women of color, and women in male-dominated fields, particularly as they engage in “equity work” to improve the experiences of marginalized people (Wingfield 2019). Since the police murders of George Floyd and other Black Americans and institutional denouncements of racism in the summer of 2020, subsequent overturn of affirmative action in college admissions, and backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, marginalized people have been under attack in the US work force. This panel will highlight the various types of identity taxation and equity work that marginalized employees of different ranks experience in various occupations. Panelists will discuss how have they have applied sociological concepts to taxation scholarship and the implications of taxation in and beyond academia. Panelists will also share strategies for navigating identity taxation in this socio-political climate.
(Session Organizer) Tiffany D. Joseph, Northeastern University; (Session Organizer) Laura Ellen Hirshfield, U of Illinois, Chicago; (Panelist) Ruth Enid Zambrana, University of Maryland; (Panelist) Tsedale Mekete Melaku, CUNY-Baruch College; (Panelist) Caleb E. Dawson, University of California-Merced; (Presider) Laura Ellen Hirshfield, U of Illinois, Chicago; (Panelist) Victor E. Ray, University of Iowa
Reimagining and Fostering the Dignity of Working People
Post-covid, the lives of workers have transformed rapidly, with the increased dualization of labor market, which have come with not only more AI/high tech, gig and remote jobs, but also growing insecurity, isolation, and alienation. How can work support meaningful lives under these conditions? How can workers find recognition at work? Should they? How can the public, private and non-profit sectors intervene? Drawing on their empirical research, participants discuss how to reimagine and foster the dignity of working people across the class divide in this rapidly changing landscape.
(Session Organizer) Michelle Randall, American Sociological Association; (Session Organizer) Michèle Lamont, Harvard University; (Presider) Michèle Lamont, Harvard University
- How Women Living on the Margin Sustain Dignity: An Inquiry through Empirical Poetry – Monica C. Bell, Yale University
- AI and Dignity at Work – Allison Pugh, Johns Hopkins University
- Insecurity and dignity across national contexts – Lorenza Antonucci, University of Birmingham; Elena Ayala-Hurtado, Princeton University
- Dignity and Spatial Inequality across America – Kathryn J. Edin, Princeton University
- Is Dignity found through work, or despite it? – Steven Hitlin, University of Iowa; Matthew Andersson, Baylor University
Reimagining Birth Work: Midwifery and Doulas
In the realm of maternal health, midwives and doulas play pivotal roles in advocating for holistic, patient-centered care that honors the transformative journey of childbirth. This panel explores the profound impact of midwifery and doula support on maternal health outcomes, empowerment, and the evolution of healthcare practices. This panel convenes experts and practitioners to examine the socio-cultural, economic, and medical dimensions of midwifery and doula care, highlighting their contributions to enhancing birthing experiences and promoting maternal well-being.
(Session Organizer) Asantewaa Darkwa, University of Illinois-Chicago; (Session Organizer) Taura Taylor, Morehouse College; (Presider) Taura Taylor, Morehouse College; (Panelist) Asantewaa Darkwa, University of Illinois-Chicago; (Panelist) Cindy Davis, Melanated Group Midwifery Care; (Panelist) Karie Stewart, Melanated Group Midwifery Care; (Panelist) Tayo Mbande, Chicago Birthworks Collective
Reimagining the Future of OUR Work: Are We Preparing Sociologists for Work in Diverse Settings?
This session will apply a sociological lens to examine the potential for our discipline to train sociologists who can address complex societal challenges by working in diverse settings. Although many problems are engineering, technologically or medically related, at their root they are social and behavioral in nature; the challenges posed by climate change and COVID-19 highlight the human aspects and call for interdisciplinary collaborations. Presenters from academic and applied settings and experiences will discuss how to best train and support the future workforce of sociologists in the skills necessary to engage in inquiry regarding policy and practice solutions, ranging from quality improvement to national or global efforts to address the major challenges of our times. Presenters will provide examples and insights into how we can advance sociologists seeking to engage with the major social and economic problems of our time and in their efforts to collaborate with other sciences.
(Session Organizer) Chloe E. Bird, Tufts Medical Center; (Session Organizer) Catherine Mobley, Clemson University; (Presider) Ricky N. Bluthenthal, University of Southern California; (Discussant) Stephanie N. Wilson, Applied Worldwide
- Sociology Beyond the Ivory Tower: Non-Academic Career Patterns and Implications for Sociological Training – Karen Albright, University of Colorado
- Constrained Choice and Career Paths in Applied and Academic Sociology – Chloe E. Bird, Tufts Medical Center
- The Unrecognized Contribution of Sociologists in Government Positions – Augie Diana, HHS/NIH
- Finding Our Way: The Professional Identity Development of Applied Sociologists and Implications for the Future of the Profession – Catherine Mobley, Clemson University
- International Perspectives on Applied Sociology – Jerry A. Jacobs, University of Pennsylvania
Reimagining Work Under Mass Incarceration: Exploring Barriers and Opportunities
This thematic panel brings together leading sociologists to explore the multifaceted impact of mass incarceration on work. The discussion will examine qualitative and quantitative approaches to studying obstacles and opportunities for formerly incarcerated people seeking employment. Experts will discuss research on stigma, discrimination, legal restrictions, access to education and training, trust, and other challenges related to work. Additionally, the panel will highlight social processes of resilience and the potential for interventions designed to mitigate these barriers. This session aims to examine the complexities of work in the context of mass incarceration and to consider how research can be leveraged for reforms and actionable solutions toward a more inclusive labor market.
(Session Organizer) Jessica T. Simes, Boston University; (Presider) Jessica T. Simes, Boston University; (Panelist) Brielle Bryan, Rice University; (Panelist) David J. Harding, University of California-Berkeley; (Panelist) Damon Jeremy Phillips, Columbia University; (Panelist) Sandra S. Smith, Harvard University
Rethinking Work: How Hybrid and Remote Work impact Gender, Racial, and Other Inequalities
The covid pandemic lockdowns initiated a widespread social experiment normalizing remote and hybrid work, thereby sustainably changing the landscape of work. Though remote work existed long before the pandemic, working from home rose 5x from 2019 to 2023, with 40% of US employees now working remotely at least one day per week (Bloom et al. 2023). The pandemic increased working from home more than the past 40 years combined, and these gains have remained high. While we know that work has transformed significantly since 2020, numerous questions remain about the changing nature of work. Specifically, what are the implications for the traditional organization of work, e.g. the ideal worker norm and patriarchal, white supremacist, and ableist hierarchies? What are the implications for the subsequent future of inequity in the workplace? By understanding the experiences and normative expectations of employees and leaders, we can better understand how the structural realities and cultural schemas that constitute the foundation of work are changing.
(Presider) Shelley J. Correll, Stanford University; (Session Organizer) Alison Wynn, Stanford University; (Session Organizer) Melissa Victoria Abad, Stanford University; (Session Organizer) JoAnne Wehner, Stanford University; (Panelist) Marianne Cooper, Stanford University; (Panelist) Kathleen Gerson, New York University; (Panelist) Caitlyn Collins, Washington University-St. Louis; (Panelist) Wen Fan, Boston College
Rising Labor Activism in Today’s World
Worker activism and voice, whether directed within the workplace, through labor unions, or political participation, has been core for structuring norms, policies, and practices surrounding work and renumeration. Today, workers face a variety of challenges that increase the difficulty of meaningful input into how work is performed, the conditions of work, and the treatment of workers. These include changes to corporate organizational structures, the decline of labor union power, the rise of new technologies automation, and globalization. What avenues exist for workers to successfully have a seat at the policy and workplace table and create meaningful and durable change? How do workers forge new forms of organizational solidarity to create the necessary power to influence change? This session intends to bring together top scholars of work and labor to discuss the past, present, and future of labor activism. Panelists will discuss the findings from their research and highlight the possible sources and mechanisms of expanding the scope and effectiveness of labor activism.
(Session Organizer) Tom VanHeuvelen, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; (Presider) Tom VanHeuvelen, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; (Discussant) Tom VanHeuvelen, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; (Panelist) Barry Eidlin, McGill University; (Panelist) Ruth Milkman, CUNY-Graduate Center; (Panelist) Josh Seim, Boston College; (Panelist) Pablo U. Gaston, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Social Policy Interventions for More Equitable Work
As work-related inequality has surged in recent decades, researchers and policymakers have been experimenting with a range of interventions. The three panelists have studied five of the most prominent approaches: the job guarantee, universal basic income, work-from-home, the four day week, and a third worker category between employee and independent contractor status. The session will include findings from these policies. Panelists will also be asked to reflect on the intersections of the policies they have studied, inequalities and the “future of work.”
(Session Organizer) Juliet B. Schor, Boston College; (Presider) Juliet B. Schor, Boston College; (Panelist) Wen Fan, Boston College; (Panelist) Maximilian Kasy, Oxford University; (Panelist) Veena Dubal, UC Hastings College of the Law; (Discussant) Juliet B. Schor, Boston College
Sociologists on the State of US Politics in 2025
Sociologists of race, gender and sexuality, class, and politics will analyze the state of US politics in 2025, looking at both how everyday people engage with politics and at the policies and government actions that may be affecting them. We will discuss sociological perspectives on challenges to our democracy and the role of organizations and organizers in confronting those challenges.
(Session Organizer) Daniel Laurison, Swarthmore College; (Presider) Daniel Laurison, Swarthmore College; (Panelist) James R. Jones, Rutgers University-Newark; (Panelist) Michèle Lamont, Harvard University; (Panelist) Tey Meadow, Columbia University; (Panelist) G. Cristina Mora, University of California-Berkeley
The Broader Impacts of Work Trends
What are the broader impacts of trends at work on experiences outside of work? Changes at work in contemporary capitalist societies such as shifts in insecurity, workplace inequality, remote work, automation, job quality, and access to decent benefits rebound on other institutions such as community, education, and families. Those broader impacts are pathways through which trends at work affect overall levels of societal inequality and insecurity. This session brings together leading scholars of the broader impacts of work and focuses in particular on how trends at work affect societal inequality and insecurity. Panelists will identify work trends that exacerbate inequality and insecurity, but also highlight trends that may reduce inequality and insecurity.
(Session Organizer) Rachel E. Dwyer, Ohio State University; (Presider) Rachel E. Dwyer, Ohio State University; (Panelist) Pilar Gonalons-Pons, University of Pennsylvania; (Panelist) Tom VanHeuvelen, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; (Panelist) Kristen S. Harknett, University of California-San Francisco; (Panelist) Ken-Hou Lin, University of Texas at Austin
The Future of Colorism in the Workplace
How will people experience colorism in an evolving workplace? Will racial and color-based discrimination persist if more of us work remotely? Will Generative AI help alleviate or exacerbate our experiences of colorism at work? This panel will investigate how an increasingly diverse workforce navigates the persistent challenges of colorism in the context of structural racism. With most organizations struggling to achieve anything close to racial justice or inclusion, the future of colorism at work needs investigation. Panelists will discuss the progress we have made in the courts and with legislation like the CROWN Act in protecting people of color from color and hair-based discrimination at work. Recent work has also highlighted the significant role that skin tone plays, sometimes bigger than race, in stratifying people in education, healthcare, employment and housing. Panelists will also engage the role of community-based organizing and resistance against colorism that has made a long-hidden problem more visible. Given the outsized role that colorism has in perpetuating inequality and racial oppression writ large, this panel of highly influential scholars in the field will bring a critical eye to the future of colorism and race in the rapidly evolving world of work.
(Session Organizer) Margaret Hunter, Santa Clara University; (Panelist) Ellis Prentis Monk, Harvard University; (Panelist) Tanya K Hernandez, Fordham University; (Panelist) Meeta Rani Jha, University of California-Berkeley; (Panelist) JeffriAnne Wilder; (Presider) Margaret Hunter, Santa Clara University
The Future of Work in Healthcare Professions: From Working Conditions to Theory
For nearly a century, health professions have been an exemplary case for the study of professional work. In the wake of COVID-19, the Great Resignation, and the increase in remote work, sociological understandings of the present and future of work are more important than ever. This invited panel will consider recent transformations in health professions work, bringing critical attention to how the day-to-day work conditions for health professionals present opportunities to advance sociological theories of professional work. Indeed, the classic cornerstones of sociological theorizing about professional work—autonomy, service to the public, and expertise—have been undermined by corporatization and other such structural changes. Simultaneously, health professions work has become more diversified, with particular growth and differentiation among nursing and care work fields, and new actors like patient advocates have taken more prominent roles in healthcare delivery and research. In response to these changes, our panel will explore how sociologists have traditionally understood “the professions” through extant literature and whether this remains a useful body of theory for describing contemporary work conditions. This panel will bring together experts on a variety of classic health professions—physicians and nurses—as well as newer and paraprofessional forms of work—like patient advocates and home healthcare workers. The panelists will critically consider longstanding questions about autonomy and internal regulation versus external pressures like patient consumerism, describing what these dilemmas look like in a contemporary context and updating the field with new insights about health professional work conditions and the opportunities for new theorizing that these work conditions present. Panelists will draw on empirical analyses of the changing nature of professional work in healthcare to develop methodological and theoretical toolkits for studying the future of professional work as it unfolds.
(Session Organizer) Alexandra Vinson, University of Michigan; (Session Organizer) Kelly Underman, Drexel University; (Panelist) Fumilayo Showers, University of Connecticut; (Panelist) Tania M. Jenkins, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; (Panelist) LaTonya Trotter, University of Washington; (Panelist) Alexandra Vinson, University of Michigan; (Panelist) Kelly Underman, Drexel University; (Presider) Hyeyoung Oh Nelson, University of Colorado-Denver
Theorizing Gendered and Racialized Organizations and Processes
This session examines theories of gendered (Acker 1990) and racialized processes (Ray 2019) in organizations. Participants on this panel will discuss how racialized and gendered processes become embedded in organizational procedures. Panelists will focus on workplaces, schools, and churches as central cogs in the production of racialized and gendered inequality. Possible topics included organizational responses to the increasing legal pressures targeting diversity, equity and inclusion policies, how racialized and gendered mechanisms intersect to produce harmful outcomes, processes of gendered and racialized organizations, and the ways broadly shared ideologies used to justify inequality. Panelists will also discuss the ways organizations can work to lessen inequalities.
(Session Organizer) Victor E. Ray, University of Iowa; (Presider) Victor E. Ray, University of Iowa; (Panelist) Jelani I. Ince, University of Washington; (Panelist) Sharla N. Alegria, University of Toronto; (Panelist) Alicia Sheares, University of California-Berkeley; (Panelist) Victor E. Ray, University of Iowa
Unacknowledged and Unregulated Work: Uncovering Mechanisms of Marginalization in Organizations
This session examines research that has uncovered the various aspects of work that morph into expected core components of employment. These additional aspects of work are undervalued, unacknowledged, overlooked, uncompensated, and unrewarded in organizations (Durr & Wingfield, 2011; Evans & Moore, 2015; Melaku, 2019; 2024; Moore, 2008; 2011; Ray et al., 2023; Wingfield; 2019; 2020). Various forms of uncompensated labor have been required of marginalized employees in dominant white spaces that negatively impact their career trajectories. This panel will discuss multiple forms of unacknowledged and unregulated work from emotional segregation (Beeman, 2007), identity taxation (Hirshfield and Joseph, 2012), the inclusion tax (Melaku, 2019; 2022; 2023; 2024), emotional labor and impossible burdens (Evans & Moore, 2015; Moore, 2008; 2011), and incidental racialization (Pan, 2017) that abound in various organizations. These unacknowledged and unregulated works operate as mechanisms of white supremacy that are embedded within institutional spaces that out of hand negatively impact racially marginalized groups. Additionally, the panelists will detail practical ways of identifying unregulated and unacknowledged work that derail targeted groups in their pursuit of advancement, as well as provide recommendations on how to navigate these discourses.
(Session Organizer) Tsedale Mekete Melaku, CUNY-Baruch College; (Presider) Melissa Victoria Abad, Stanford University
- Emotional Segregation at Work: Unrecognized Labor, Cost, and Trauma of Racist Targeting – Angie Beeman, CUNY-Baruch College
- Identity Taxation in Academic Medicine – Laura Ellen Hirshfield, U of Illinois, Chicago
- “Code Monkeys” and “Work Horses”: Asian Americans, Implicit Bias, and the Bamboo Ceiling – Yung-Yi Diana Pan, CUNY-Brooklyn College
- From Hired Positions to DEI Leads in Organizations: Pervasiveness of the Inclusion Tax – Tsedale Mekete Melaku, CUNY-Baruch College; Anthony D Meyers, City University of New York, Baruch College, Zicklin School of Business
- Impossible Burdens: Emotional Labor in the Organizations – Wendy Leo Moore, Texas A&M University-College Station
What’s Next for Employment Equity?
Derived from the civil rights act, equal employment opportunity (EEO) requirements to prevent discrimination in the US largely target organizations with requirements managed through human resources and legal departments. However, economic and labor force transformations including globalization, organizational restructuring, and the proliferation of information technologies have shifted organizational forms, reducing the share of employees covered by EEO rules. Over the past four decades, accelerating neoliberalism drove organizations to become flatter, seek more flexibility, and shift more risks to workers. More recently, technological changes including platform-based companies, remote work, and increasingly sophisticated AI continue to make new organizational forms possible. A key result of all of these trends is fewer jobs with the Standard Employment Relationships that characterized the post-WWII era. More and more, non-employees, whose work is outside organizations’ EEO apparatuses, provide the effort that becomes revenue. As all of these macro-level shifts have been changing what it means to have a job, many if not most companies, schools, and virtually every kind of organization has drafted a diversity statement and adopted a set of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) goals. But when and how do these equity tools, both in the new EDI frame and the older EEO frame, apply to workers as employment relations shift? What are the implications of these developments in work relations for meaningful equity and inclusion?
(Session Organizer) Sharla N. Alegria, University of Toronto; (Session Organizer) Ethel L. Mickey, California State University-San Bernardino; (Panelist) Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; (Panelist) Frank Dobbin, Harvard University; (Presider) Ethel L. Mickey, California State University-San Bernardino; (Panelist) Erin E. Hatton, University at Buffalo; (Panelist) Pallavi Banerjee, University of Calgary; (Discussant) Koji Chavez, Indiana University-Bloomington
Women of Color at Work: The Future of Work and Organizations
Women of color in the work remain undertheorized upon, which has limited our understanding of their impact, experiences, and strategies for navigating often hostile environments. Because much of the organizational and race scholarship has centered on the Black/white binary, this panel focuses specifically on expanding our understanding and providing new insight on non-Black women of color within the workplace.
(Session Organizer) Melissa Victoria Abad, Stanford University; (Presider) Melissa Victoria Abad, Stanford University
- Ctl+Alt+Inclusion: Decoding the Tech Industry’s Diversity Paradox for Women of Color – Rana Abulbasal, Utah State University
- (un)doing gendered organizations: A study of women-led local beauty retail stores in Canada – Sepideh Borzoo, Toronto Metropolitan University
- Moving Beyond Categories: Conceptualizing Asian Americans as a status group on Organizations – Tiffany Y. Chow, Stanford University
- Gendered Analysis of Colombians and Puerto Ricans in Tech – Lina Rincón
- Seen but Not Heard: Intersectional Identities in the Professions – Yung-Yi Diana Pan, CUNY-Brooklyn College
