This paper tracks 120 years of Black-white segregation in US metropolitan areas. We draw on comprehensive Census data at consistent small-scale geographies to study segregation trajectories in 219 metropolitan areas since 1900. We update past research to show that total segregation in metropolitan areas peaked around 1960 and has now fallen below its 1930 level. Our major focus is on the spatial components of segregation. We show that two types of macro-segregation—increasing racial disparities between cities and their surrounding areas and rising segregation between communities within suburbia—became substantial only after 1950 and have remained at a similar level since 1960. At that time, micro-segregation (separation between neighborhoods in cities and in suburbia) had begun to fall. Multivariate analyses over time show how suburban fragmentation, socioeconomic differences between Black and white workers, and changes in the size of the Black population were associated with these trends in each component of segregation. The durability of segregation today is largely due to macro-segregation, which by 2020 accounts for nearly half of total metropolitan segregation.
{"title":"The changing spatial pattern of metropolitan racial segregation, 1900–2020: the rise of macro-segregation","authors":"H Jacob Carlson, John R Logan, Jongho Won","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf069","url":null,"abstract":"This paper tracks 120 years of Black-white segregation in US metropolitan areas. We draw on comprehensive Census data at consistent small-scale geographies to study segregation trajectories in 219 metropolitan areas since 1900. We update past research to show that total segregation in metropolitan areas peaked around 1960 and has now fallen below its 1930 level. Our major focus is on the spatial components of segregation. We show that two types of macro-segregation—increasing racial disparities between cities and their surrounding areas and rising segregation between communities within suburbia—became substantial only after 1950 and have remained at a similar level since 1960. At that time, micro-segregation (separation between neighborhoods in cities and in suburbia) had begun to fall. Multivariate analyses over time show how suburban fragmentation, socioeconomic differences between Black and white workers, and changes in the size of the Black population were associated with these trends in each component of segregation. The durability of segregation today is largely due to macro-segregation, which by 2020 accounts for nearly half of total metropolitan segregation.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144228472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Research and media discussion of police contact routinely conceptualize it as time-constrained interactions between officers and civilians. However, extant literature documents preparation for encounters and post-encounter advocacy, which each challenge restricted understandings of contact and, importantly, its relationship to mental health. We introduce “perpetual encounters” to both theoretically and empirically move closer to the temporally unbounded and enduring way that police contact is experienced in black women’s everyday lives. Utilizing a novel, nationally representative dataset on their policing experiences, we explore how mental health is independently and conjointly associated with three dimensions of police contact: preparation, police stops, and advocacy against police violence. Beyond exemplifying how pervasive the police are in the day-to-day lives of marginalized communities, extending the scope of contact recognizes preparation as a significant threat to mental health and advocacy as a health-promoting activity. This study supports moving beyond discrete notions and measurement of police contact to process-oriented understandings and relational modeling.
{"title":"Perpetual encounters: reconceptualizing police contact and measuring its relationship to black women’s mental health","authors":"Faith M Deckard, Shannon Malone Gonzalez, Yasmiyn Irizarry, Jaime Feng-Yuan Hsu","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf070","url":null,"abstract":"Research and media discussion of police contact routinely conceptualize it as time-constrained interactions between officers and civilians. However, extant literature documents preparation for encounters and post-encounter advocacy, which each challenge restricted understandings of contact and, importantly, its relationship to mental health. We introduce “perpetual encounters” to both theoretically and empirically move closer to the temporally unbounded and enduring way that police contact is experienced in black women’s everyday lives. Utilizing a novel, nationally representative dataset on their policing experiences, we explore how mental health is independently and conjointly associated with three dimensions of police contact: preparation, police stops, and advocacy against police violence. Beyond exemplifying how pervasive the police are in the day-to-day lives of marginalized communities, extending the scope of contact recognizes preparation as a significant threat to mental health and advocacy as a health-promoting activity. This study supports moving beyond discrete notions and measurement of police contact to process-oriented understandings and relational modeling.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"117 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144202187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A growing proportion of children live in unaffordable, overcrowded, or doubled-up housing, raising concerns among scholars of child wellbeing. These arrangements may affect children through increased exposure to insecure mobility such as frequent or reactive moves. Though scholars consider resource-strained arrangements insecure, the assumption that they lead to insecure mobility is quantitatively untested. Further, demographic theory suggests that these arrangements would lead to purposive moves, which are calculated adjustments to things like costs, space, or independence that have plausibly neutral or beneficial effects for children. I use individual-fixed effects regressions and restricted-access residential histories from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to assess how living in resource-strained housing predicts exposure to mobility outcomes for children. Consistent with literature on housing insecurity, severe cost burdens and doubling up with non-kin predict higher probabilities of either frequent or reactive moves, and severe overcrowding precedes moves to high-poverty neighborhoods. Aligned with a traditional view on mobility, analyses also suggest that cost burdens, overcrowding, and doubling up lead to purposive moves to less expensive housing, more spacious housing, and more independent housing arrangements, respectively. Together, these findings suggest that housing strains, in the absence of poverty, increase the likelihood of a set of moves that have generally ambivalent implications for children’s life chances. However, families in poverty may lack the resources necessary to make moves that address their housing needs and aspirations. These findings contradict long-held rules of thumb, suggesting a reconsideration of how we collectively define, study, and respond to insecurity.
{"title":"When are they insecure? Housing arrangements and residential mobility among families with children","authors":"Warren Lowell","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf062","url":null,"abstract":"A growing proportion of children live in unaffordable, overcrowded, or doubled-up housing, raising concerns among scholars of child wellbeing. These arrangements may affect children through increased exposure to insecure mobility such as frequent or reactive moves. Though scholars consider resource-strained arrangements insecure, the assumption that they lead to insecure mobility is quantitatively untested. Further, demographic theory suggests that these arrangements would lead to purposive moves, which are calculated adjustments to things like costs, space, or independence that have plausibly neutral or beneficial effects for children. I use individual-fixed effects regressions and restricted-access residential histories from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to assess how living in resource-strained housing predicts exposure to mobility outcomes for children. Consistent with literature on housing insecurity, severe cost burdens and doubling up with non-kin predict higher probabilities of either frequent or reactive moves, and severe overcrowding precedes moves to high-poverty neighborhoods. Aligned with a traditional view on mobility, analyses also suggest that cost burdens, overcrowding, and doubling up lead to purposive moves to less expensive housing, more spacious housing, and more independent housing arrangements, respectively. Together, these findings suggest that housing strains, in the absence of poverty, increase the likelihood of a set of moves that have generally ambivalent implications for children’s life chances. However, families in poverty may lack the resources necessary to make moves that address their housing needs and aspirations. These findings contradict long-held rules of thumb, suggesting a reconsideration of how we collectively define, study, and respond to insecurity.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"71 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144165147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although much extreme discourse is found at the poles, we still know little about how individuals in the center make sense of immigration as “complicated” and even “too complex” to make sense of. Such issues are important to address if we are to better understand the contemporary landscape of bias and belonging and the character of attitudes in the middle. We examine the issue by drawing on a unique survey of Californians and illustrative, linked, in-depth interviews. Using latent class analysis we identify five distinct attitudinal classes, showing that three, constituting 40 percent of respondents, lie between consistently pro- and anti-immigrant stances. Our interviews reveal that rather than expressing undifferentiated views, those in the middle express patterned forms of selective uncertainty that, in turn, allow them to frame the issue differently. At an ideological level, selective uncertainty helps individuals to narrow the scope of immigration in terms of what is determinable, and thus rationalize political commitments with outgroup bias toward the undocumented. At a discursive level, selective uncertainty affords an opportunity to soften or occlude bias and create a distance from the poles, especially on the right. Taken together, our findings open up the “black-boxed” middle of immigration attitudes to reveal its distinct categorical characteristics and show how selective uncertainty allows individuals to make sense of their positions. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of our findings, including for understanding immigration attitudes as a field of positions more generally.
{"title":"What Lies between the Poles? Selective Uncertainty and Occluded Bias in Immigration Attitudes in California","authors":"G Cristina Mora, Chelsea Daniels, Tianna Paschel","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf059","url":null,"abstract":"Although much extreme discourse is found at the poles, we still know little about how individuals in the center make sense of immigration as “complicated” and even “too complex” to make sense of. Such issues are important to address if we are to better understand the contemporary landscape of bias and belonging and the character of attitudes in the middle. We examine the issue by drawing on a unique survey of Californians and illustrative, linked, in-depth interviews. Using latent class analysis we identify five distinct attitudinal classes, showing that three, constituting 40 percent of respondents, lie between consistently pro- and anti-immigrant stances. Our interviews reveal that rather than expressing undifferentiated views, those in the middle express patterned forms of selective uncertainty that, in turn, allow them to frame the issue differently. At an ideological level, selective uncertainty helps individuals to narrow the scope of immigration in terms of what is determinable, and thus rationalize political commitments with outgroup bias toward the undocumented. At a discursive level, selective uncertainty affords an opportunity to soften or occlude bias and create a distance from the poles, especially on the right. Taken together, our findings open up the “black-boxed” middle of immigration attitudes to reveal its distinct categorical characteristics and show how selective uncertainty allows individuals to make sense of their positions. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of our findings, including for understanding immigration attitudes as a field of positions more generally.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144165148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Scholars posit that the flexibility stigma—a belief that workers who use flexible workplace policies, such as parental and sick leave—exacerbates gender inequality. However, a large body of research argues that the smaller number of men who take leaves face even more severe stigma than women because they violate norms of masculinity as well as the employers’ expectation that employees prioritize paid work. Empirical evidence in support of this claim comes largely from studies that estimate stigma using proxy measures such as leave uptake rates and pay inequality for leave takers. This study tests the gender deviance perspective more directly using survey experimental methods, in a setting where we would expect stigmatization of male leave takers to be particularly high—among workers in four elite firms in Japan. Drawing on data from over 8,000 employees, the results reveal that, even where the male breadwinner ideology is deeply entrenched, men’s leaves are no more stigmatized than women’s. To the contrary, there are no gender differences in stigmatization of sick leave, and women who take parental leave face more severe stigmatization than men. The results undercut claims that men face greater stigma when they take similar leaves as women, demonstrate the fallibility of proxy measures of stigma, and highlight how, in large Japanese firms, women remain doubly disadvantaged by the flexibility stigma.
{"title":"Tainted leave: a survey-experimental investigation of flexibility stigma in Japanese workplaces","authors":"Hilary J Holbrow","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf063","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars posit that the flexibility stigma—a belief that workers who use flexible workplace policies, such as parental and sick leave—exacerbates gender inequality. However, a large body of research argues that the smaller number of men who take leaves face even more severe stigma than women because they violate norms of masculinity as well as the employers’ expectation that employees prioritize paid work. Empirical evidence in support of this claim comes largely from studies that estimate stigma using proxy measures such as leave uptake rates and pay inequality for leave takers. This study tests the gender deviance perspective more directly using survey experimental methods, in a setting where we would expect stigmatization of male leave takers to be particularly high—among workers in four elite firms in Japan. Drawing on data from over 8,000 employees, the results reveal that, even where the male breadwinner ideology is deeply entrenched, men’s leaves are no more stigmatized than women’s. To the contrary, there are no gender differences in stigmatization of sick leave, and women who take parental leave face more severe stigmatization than men. The results undercut claims that men face greater stigma when they take similar leaves as women, demonstrate the fallibility of proxy measures of stigma, and highlight how, in large Japanese firms, women remain doubly disadvantaged by the flexibility stigma.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"82 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144136778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Studies have long documented a persistent link between sectarian Protestantism and authoritarian parenting ideologies and disciplinary practices. The current study proposes “Christian nationalism” as a schema that demands civic and social life be ordered according to sectarian Protestant norms, and consequently, a key dynamic in shaping how Americans think about parenting and punishment. Given that Christian nationalism seems rooted within particular community and parenting exposures and is powerfully linked with support for hierarchical gender relationships, authoritarian means of social control, and violence to govern problem populations, I theorize these associations represent a dynamic found not just for society or between couples, but in parenting approaches, specifically in prioritizing children’s obedience over their intellectual autonomy and support for corporal punishment. Drawing on data from the 1996, 2014, and 2021 General Social Surveys, I find Christian nationalism (measured in two ways) is a strong predictor that Americans prioritize obedience in children over children thinking for themselves, and endorse “hard spanking” to discipline children. These associations are robust to controls for numerous religious measures often found in association with these outcomes, as well as relevant political and demographic factors. Tests for interactions reveal inconsistent moderating effects, but among consistent patterns, Christian nationalism makes moderate and liberal Americans indistinguishable from their conservative counterparts on the issue of spanking. Findings affirm Christian nationalism has been and remains linked with prioritizing obedience to authority, deprioritizing independent thought, and endorsing the corrective use of violence, not only just for civil society but also those most vulnerable to coercion.
{"title":"Order begins at home: Christian nationalism and control over children","authors":"Samuel L Perry","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf058","url":null,"abstract":"Studies have long documented a persistent link between sectarian Protestantism and authoritarian parenting ideologies and disciplinary practices. The current study proposes “Christian nationalism” as a schema that demands civic and social life be ordered according to sectarian Protestant norms, and consequently, a key dynamic in shaping how Americans think about parenting and punishment. Given that Christian nationalism seems rooted within particular community and parenting exposures and is powerfully linked with support for hierarchical gender relationships, authoritarian means of social control, and violence to govern problem populations, I theorize these associations represent a dynamic found not just for society or between couples, but in parenting approaches, specifically in prioritizing children’s obedience over their intellectual autonomy and support for corporal punishment. Drawing on data from the 1996, 2014, and 2021 General Social Surveys, I find Christian nationalism (measured in two ways) is a strong predictor that Americans prioritize obedience in children over children thinking for themselves, and endorse “hard spanking” to discipline children. These associations are robust to controls for numerous religious measures often found in association with these outcomes, as well as relevant political and demographic factors. Tests for interactions reveal inconsistent moderating effects, but among consistent patterns, Christian nationalism makes moderate and liberal Americans indistinguishable from their conservative counterparts on the issue of spanking. Findings affirm Christian nationalism has been and remains linked with prioritizing obedience to authority, deprioritizing independent thought, and endorsing the corrective use of violence, not only just for civil society but also those most vulnerable to coercion.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"79 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143878116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This review explores Anna Gjika’s When Rape Goes Viral (2023), a sociological study of how digital technologies transform the dynamics of sexual violence among youth. Through detailed analysis of high-profile cases like Steubenville and Maryville, Gjika argues that social media not only amplifies rape culture but also shifts how consent, victimhood, and justice are perceived. The book examines the dual role of digital evidence—supporting survivors while sometimes retraumatizing them—and critiques the legal system’s limitations in addressing online forms of harm. The review highlights Gjika’s valuable contributions, including her call for restorative justice and consent education, while noting some limitations regarding intersectionality and global legal perspectives. Overall, the book is praised for its clarity, urgency, and relevance in the digital age.
{"title":"Review of “When Rape Goes Viral: Youth and Sexual Assault in the Digital Age”","authors":"Anna Brasseur","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf049","url":null,"abstract":"This review explores Anna Gjika’s When Rape Goes Viral (2023), a sociological study of how digital technologies transform the dynamics of sexual violence among youth. Through detailed analysis of high-profile cases like Steubenville and Maryville, Gjika argues that social media not only amplifies rape culture but also shifts how consent, victimhood, and justice are perceived. The book examines the dual role of digital evidence—supporting survivors while sometimes retraumatizing them—and critiques the legal system’s limitations in addressing online forms of harm. The review highlights Gjika’s valuable contributions, including her call for restorative justice and consent education, while noting some limitations regarding intersectionality and global legal perspectives. Overall, the book is praised for its clarity, urgency, and relevance in the digital age.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143866320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article presents a socio-historical analysis of the ways women’s everyday resistance and struggles over several decades have contributed to the emergence of the Woman, Life, Freedom (WLF) movement in Iran. Drawing on archival and (digital) ethnographic data spanning from the mid-19th century to the 2022 WLF movement, I take a spatiotemporal approach to illustrate the evolution of feminist politics in social (non)movements in Iran. I argue that while state policies have historically constrained women’s access to and participation in sociopolitical spaces, these very constraints have gradually fueled the growth of grassroots feminist politics, which have incrementally scaled up to sustain and generate new forms of resistance and struggle. I specifically argue how the ongoing dialectical interaction between the state and women’s everyday resistance and historical struggles have led to the fractal expansion of feminist politics through decentralized feminist friendship networks that cultivate (in)visible forms of everyday resistance. This study has implications for understanding how women in general and feminist activists, in particular, navigate material circumstances and different forms of spaces for change across various spatiotemporal scales, particularly in authoritarian states, where feminist politics’ creativity and adaptability become essential forces for sustaining resistance and advancing social change.
{"title":"Fractal scaling of feminist politics and the emergence of woman life freedom movement in Iran","authors":"Mahbubeh Moqadam","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf050","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a socio-historical analysis of the ways women’s everyday resistance and struggles over several decades have contributed to the emergence of the Woman, Life, Freedom (WLF) movement in Iran. Drawing on archival and (digital) ethnographic data spanning from the mid-19th century to the 2022 WLF movement, I take a spatiotemporal approach to illustrate the evolution of feminist politics in social (non)movements in Iran. I argue that while state policies have historically constrained women’s access to and participation in sociopolitical spaces, these very constraints have gradually fueled the growth of grassroots feminist politics, which have incrementally scaled up to sustain and generate new forms of resistance and struggle. I specifically argue how the ongoing dialectical interaction between the state and women’s everyday resistance and historical struggles have led to the fractal expansion of feminist politics through decentralized feminist friendship networks that cultivate (in)visible forms of everyday resistance. This study has implications for understanding how women in general and feminist activists, in particular, navigate material circumstances and different forms of spaces for change across various spatiotemporal scales, particularly in authoritarian states, where feminist politics’ creativity and adaptability become essential forces for sustaining resistance and advancing social change.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143841234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates the political activities of different segments within the capitalist class, comparing an inner circle of interlocked directors to a list of Norwegian wealthy owners. Drawing on a unique dataset that combines data on corporate boards with political participation records, the study compares wealthy owners and an “inner circle” of corporate directors. The findings reveal a division of labor within the capitalist class: while directors who are embedded in corporate networks participate more actively in institutionalized political settings, such as government advisory boards and business associations, wealthy owners exert their influence through financial contributions to political parties. Contrary to arguments suggesting that fragmentation of corporate networks weakens political power, this study shows that these groups continue to effectively promote their interests through distinct yet complementary strategies. The analysis highlights the continued political significance of both ownership and corporate directorships in influencing political processes, even in an “egalitarian” Scandinavian context. These findings challenge assumptions about a lack of cohesion and unity in the capitalist class and offer new insights into how economic power is translated into political influence.
{"title":"The politics of the Norwegian capitalist class: the inner circle and wealthy owners","authors":"Marte Lund Saga","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf047","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the political activities of different segments within the capitalist class, comparing an inner circle of interlocked directors to a list of Norwegian wealthy owners. Drawing on a unique dataset that combines data on corporate boards with political participation records, the study compares wealthy owners and an “inner circle” of corporate directors. The findings reveal a division of labor within the capitalist class: while directors who are embedded in corporate networks participate more actively in institutionalized political settings, such as government advisory boards and business associations, wealthy owners exert their influence through financial contributions to political parties. Contrary to arguments suggesting that fragmentation of corporate networks weakens political power, this study shows that these groups continue to effectively promote their interests through distinct yet complementary strategies. The analysis highlights the continued political significance of both ownership and corporate directorships in influencing political processes, even in an “egalitarian” Scandinavian context. These findings challenge assumptions about a lack of cohesion and unity in the capitalist class and offer new insights into how economic power is translated into political influence.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143813893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The welfare magnet hypothesis states that welfare generosity in destination countries is a migration pull factor. However, supporting evidence is mixed. Previous research has focused on explanatory factors in destination countries rather than in origin countries, examined migration from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development country perspectives rather than from a global perspective, and typically ignored that migration flows are not independent, thus overestimating welfare spending effects. We used exponential random graph models to examine migration flows between 160 countries and treated welfare spending in origin and destination countries as the main explanatory variable. Our findings show that social spending attraction effects largely disappear after controlling for various explanatory variables (gross domestic product, population size, geographic distance, democracy levels, and common spoken language). The migration preferences of low- and high-income groups do not mediate social spending attraction effects. Furthermore, flows between countries with similar spending levels are greater than flows between very low- and very high-spending countries, indicating migrant status maintenance. In conclusion, we find insufficient evidence that welfare spending strongly impacts migration.
{"title":"Evidence for the welfare magnet hypothesis? A global examination using exponential random graph models","authors":"Tim S Müller","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf048","url":null,"abstract":"The welfare magnet hypothesis states that welfare generosity in destination countries is a migration pull factor. However, supporting evidence is mixed. Previous research has focused on explanatory factors in destination countries rather than in origin countries, examined migration from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development country perspectives rather than from a global perspective, and typically ignored that migration flows are not independent, thus overestimating welfare spending effects. We used exponential random graph models to examine migration flows between 160 countries and treated welfare spending in origin and destination countries as the main explanatory variable. Our findings show that social spending attraction effects largely disappear after controlling for various explanatory variables (gross domestic product, population size, geographic distance, democracy levels, and common spoken language). The migration preferences of low- and high-income groups do not mediate social spending attraction effects. Furthermore, flows between countries with similar spending levels are greater than flows between very low- and very high-spending countries, indicating migrant status maintenance. In conclusion, we find insufficient evidence that welfare spending strongly impacts migration.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143805927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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