British Journal of Sociology最新文献

In recent decades, non-voting among the British working class has increased substantially, contributing to widening class-based inequality in electoral participation. This study examines the impact of occupational class mobility on the intergenerational transmission of electoral participation in two ways. First, by applying Diagonal Reference Models to data from the British Household Panel Survey and the UK Household Longitudinal Study covering eight General Elections. Through this, we estimate the impact of mobility on the relative influence of class of origin and class of destination. Second, by examining patterns of non-voting during the early years of adulthood in order to estimate the degree to which class patterns of non-voting among occupationally mature adults reflect processes of prior self-selection, rather than the pattern of non-voting associated with occupational class of destination. The findings indicate that upwardly mobile individuals are more likely to vote, but only after they have experienced occupational mobility into the middle class, thus suggesting a process of acculturation into the class of destination that diminishes the influence of their class origins. Conversely, individuals who are downwardly mobile from the middle class are less likely to vote. However, this lower level of participation is already apparent earlier in life, before they experience adult occupational mobility. This suggests a pre-existing pattern indicative of selection effects. These dynamics, in the context of balanced patterns of upward and downward mobility, reinforce class inequalities in electoral participation and suggest that relative differences in turnout between social classes are likely to remain stable or even widen.

This paper examines how working-class young people enroled at college in London, Rochdale and Morecambe perceive of university. It argues that university represents a great risk, associated with high levels of debt, which does deter some students, but at the same time, university is imagined as a meaningful vehicle for dignity and respect, which students place greater value on than the prospect of benefitting from the so-called “graduate premium”. Broadly, then, it argues that the desire to attend university is predicated on three factors: the calculation of risk versus reward, the “migrant effect” for the children of migrants or those who migrated directly, and thirdly, the pursuit of dignity and respect.

How are capital and the family interconnected in contemporary capitalism? In this article, we argue that they come together in owning relations. By owning capital across generations, families bridge the temporal gap between the durability of capital and the finite lifespan of private property holders and thus resolve the problem of bona vacantia. We posit that the ownership of capital influences the structure and practices of families. Vice versa family centered ownership of capital actively shapes economic processes. Making sense of how capital and the family are interlinked contributes to our understanding of the perpetuation and concentration of wealth as well as of contemporary forms of political economies. Lastly, we point to the social inequality stemming from family-centered owning relations and explore potential alternatives.

In the past decade, scholars of international migration have made remarkable strides in unpacking the complex infrastructures that channel cross-border mobility by investigating the operation of profit-oriented migration industries and the regulatory tussles of multilevel migration governance. However, little work has combined the insights of both to reveal how they interact to facilitate or inhibit the growth of particular migration regimes. This article integrates the two strands by reconceptualizing them as part of the same global field, which offers resources for exploring how the struggle for profit intersects with competitions over regulatory capital. It clarifies these dynamics through a case study of the sale of citizenship to wealthy individuals. Focusing first on the involvement of regulatory capital in the competition around economic capital, it shows how and with what outcomes countries and firms cooperate or compete in the system, leading to program resilience or risks. Then turning to the involvement of economic capital in competitions leveraging regulatory capital, it reveals how global powers can influence the citizenship policies of other countries and how third powers dominate in different ways, impacting program growth and profitability. The upshot offers greater traction for examining the limits of state sovereignty and reveals how migration regimes are produced within uneven global playing fields structured by fundamental doxa.

This essay explores the possibility of justice for the wretched of the earth. Using escrevivência (writing the experience/existence) and drawing on the theoretical insights and political praxis of the Assessoria Popular Maria Felipa (APMF, Maria Felipa Advocacy Group)-a Brazilian abolitionist organization led by Black activists-we analyze how the criminal justice system perpetrates violence against our communities and systematically denies them access to justice. Moreover, we examine the concept of Justiça Integral (Full Justice). Rooted in Afro-Brazilian ancestral knowledges, Justiça Integral moves beyond punitive ethics and embraces an ethics of care to create a transformative approach to justice. Finally, we explore pathways to making justice possible for the wretched of the earth.

Within the conceptual frame of relational economic sociology, inheritance disputes are a canonical form of relational mismatch. But the social patterning of relational mismatches, and their various ties to inequality, remain murky. In this paper, I examine all known inheritance disputes in Dallas from 1895-1945 within their social context to generate hypotheses about the relationship between inequality and mismatches more broadly. Inheritance disputes were usually resolved by increasing the spread of fortunes; in this sense, they moderated wealth inequality between individuals. But not everyone was equally able to make their preferred estate distribution a reality. Using a series of case studies, I argue that dispute resolutions tended to reify normative family structures and naturalize sharp, moralized distinctions between fuzzy social categories. The legal resolutions to this class of relational mismatches may marginally mitigate individual-level wealth inequality and simultaneously produce categorical inequalities by race, class, gender, sexuality, and family structure. I conclude with a set of hypotheses and questions for future studies.

The link between educational attainment and attitudes towards out-groups stands out as one of the most consistent statistical associations in the social and political sciences. However, a recent analysis of survey data from the United States finds that the relationship between higher education and out-group prejudice depends on the content of education. In this Research Note, we replicate that study's analysis of tertiary-level academic majors within a European context and extend it to include academic specializations below the tertiary level. Our analyses of European Social Survey (ESS) data, spanning 32 countries and over 120,000 respondents, reveal substantial variation in the association between field of study and anti-immigrant prejudice. Specifically, we find that individuals with degrees in arts, humanities, and social sciences express more positive views towards immigrants than those with degrees in other fields. A similar, though less pronounced, pattern emerges among individuals with lower levels of educational attainment. These findings challenge simplistic and politicized notions of the impact of higher education, offering a more nuanced understanding of educational attainment and its so-called “liberalizing effect.”

Although studying elites is a growing strand of scholarship in social sciences, the literature is mostly migration-blind. In this research note, we examine the role of household composition for immigrants' pathways to the elite of the household income distribution in Germany. Distinguishing between native-native, immigrant-native, and immigrant-immigrant households, we investigate the propensity of being in the income elite by household composition and whether education and self-employment, two major pathways into the income elite, differ by household composition. We hypothesize that immigrants in immigrant-native households benefit from their native partner's host-country resources and support. Using data from the German Microcensus from 2009 to 2019 covering around three million observations, we show that immigrant-native households have a higher propensity of belonging to the income elite compared to immigrant-immigrant households. Surprisingly, we find no differences between immigrant-native and native-native households. In addition, we demonstrate that the positive association between education, self-employment and elite membership is stronger for immigrant-native households compared to immigrant-immigrant households. Overall, our research note highlights the importance of the household context for immigrants' access to the income elite.