Sociology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804
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Item Inequality in the College-to-Career Transition: Self-Scarring and Underemployment(2020) Dernberger, Brittany Noel; Kleykamp, Meredith; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A recent college graduate working as a coffee shop barista, earning minimum wage and carrying thousands of dollars in student loan debt, is a familiar trope in conversations about the value of a bachelor’s degree. In the college-for-all era, young people are encouraged to attain a bachelor’s degree to bolster their labor market opportunities (Rosenbaum 2001), yet 42 percent of recent college graduates, and 35 percent of all college graduates, are working in jobs that do not require a college degree (Federal Reserve Bank of New York 2020). The American Dream posits that individual perseverance will lead to increased economic security. Young people invest in college as a pathway to a good job. Why does a degree not equally benefit all graduates, and how do graduates respond when their college investment does not pay off? I employ restricted-access Monitoring the Future panel data (1976 – 2015) and interviews with 60 recent college graduates to examine how college graduates transition from school-to-work, and how they respond when it does not go as planned. I contribute to studies of underemployment scarring by extending the context from workplace consequences to individual decision-making, unpacking how and why young people make choices related to their post-graduation employment outcomes. By examining how graduates engage as students and connecting that to post-college employment outcomes, I illustrate how graduates self-scar by making choices that diminish their ability to quickly translate their degree into a good job along three dimensions: 1) not engaging in outside-the-classroom activities during college, which are critical for career exposure and career-relevant skill-building; 2) downshifting job expectations in response to underemployment; and 3) making labor market choices that elongate underemployment. However, graduates’ decisions are not made in a vacuum, and preexisting inequalities – in economic resources, first generation student status, and social and cultural capital – are often perpetuated in the wake of underemployment. Graduates often blame themselves for their lack of labor market success. This project illuminates how inequality is replicated during the college-to-career transition through graduates’ self-scarring decisions and contributes to our understanding of who can achieve economic mobility through returns on a college education.Item Grandparent Wealth and the Well-Being of Black & White Young Adults(2019) Brown, Joey D; Cohen, Philip N; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Social origins are important predictors of adult success, and parental resources, particularly parental wealth, are positively correlated with adult well-being. Meanwhile, the overall population is now healthier and living longer than previous generations. Therefore, families are experiencing increased opportunities for multigenerational relationship formation and investment. This dissertation extends social mobility and stratification research by considering how multigenerational resources are related to young adult well-being. I examine how grandparents’ accumulated wealth prior to individuals’ eighteenth birthday is related to young adults’ educational attainment, self-rated general health and mental health, and financial independence. Additionally, in light of large, enduring racial wealth gaps between Black and White identified people, I examine whether and to what extent racially disparate patterns of family wealth accumulation condition the relationship between grandparent wealth and young adult well-being. I perform this investigation with analysis of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the PSID’s Transition to Adulthood Study (TAS). I employ multivariate longitudinal analysis techniques to perform interracial and intra-racial analyses of the relationship between grandparent wealth and young adult well-being. I decompose racial group gaps to see whether the results are attributable to family socioeconomic characteristics or the return to those characteristics. Lastly, I use marginal probabilities to examine and compare the absolute and relative consequences of racially disparate levels of grandparent wealth across well-being outcomes.Item MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF RACE AND THE MENTAL HEALTH OF LATINOS FROM AFRO-LATIN AMERICA(2018) Pena, Jessica Elaine; Marsh, Kris; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Building on past scholarship on the processes of racialization of Latinos, this dissertation addresses the role of both internal and external factors in influencing racial classification and the implications of race on the mental health outcomes of Latinos of Afro-Latin American origin. Latinos of this population have unique experiences with racial/ethnic boundaries and racialization, as many do not fit the dominant image of latinidad across the United States. This dissertation asks the following questions: How does the social context of metropolitan areas impact racial self-classification practices of Latinos? How do physical and external factors – such as skin tone, race of partners and observers – impact how Latinos are racially ascribed or self-classify? What are the mental health implications of the lived experience of race for Latinos? I draw upon the 5-year 2012-2016 American Community Survey (ACS) data and Waves 3 and 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data to address these questions.Item Intersecting Inequalities in the Paid Care Work Sector Under Changing Social and Economic Contexts(2018) Sun, Shengwei; Chen, Feinian; Yu, Wei-hsin; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation focuses on the expanding paid care work sector as a key terrain for examining labor market inequalities in the United States and China, with three papers attending to different aspects of social stratification. In the U.S., men’s presence in care work jobs remains rare despite the fast job growth in education and health care and the decline in traditionally male-dominated manufacturing sectors. Despite growing public interest, little is known about the reasons and pathways of men’s transition into care work jobs. The popular discourse attributes men’s reluctance to a matter of gender identity, whereas scholars adopting a structural approach argue that men have little incentive to enter care work jobs mainly because those jobs are underpaid. The first paper examines how well the structural and cultural approaches, respectively, explain why men enter care work jobs or not. Moreover, care work jobs have been increasingly polarized in terms of pay and job security since the 1970s, and the polarizing pattern of care work job growth is characterized by racial disparity. Is such pattern driven by racial disparity in education and labor market experience, and/or by racial discrimination? The second paper addresses this question by examining the changing determinants of entering into low-paying versus middle-to-high-paying care work jobs between two cohorts of young men who joined the workforce under different labor market conditions. Findings suggest a persisting logic of a racialized “labor queue” underlying the changing patterns of racial inequality. In the context of urban China, the transformation from a centrally planned socialist economy to a profit-oriented market economy has ended welfare-based, life-long employment in the cities, and fundamentally changed the social organization of care. The third paper examines how care workers fared in terms of earnings relative to non-care workers since the early 2000s and the factors contributing to the earnings disadvantages of care workers. Taken together, this dissertation aims to provide a better understanding of intersecting inequalities by gender, race, and class in the paid care work sector under changing social and economic contexts.Item BEYOND HONORARY WHITENESS: IDEOLOGIES OF BELONGING AND KOREAN ADOPTEE IDENTITIES(2018) Laybourn, Wendy Marie; Ray, Rashawn; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Using Asian Critical Race Theory as a framework, this dissertation examines how Korean adoption contributed to constructions of race – racial meanings and a racial order – and the effects on Korean adoptees’ identity development. This dissertation asks the following questions: What role has Korean adoption played in the U.S. racial formation? What role do various levels of social structure (e.g., media, interpersonal interactions) play in adoptees’ understanding of their belonging, both as it relates to the U.S. and Korea, and how do adoptees resolve any competing messages about their social and national citizenship? And, how do Korean adoptees make-meaning of their adoptee identity? In order to answer these questions, I draw upon three original data sources: 18 months of participant observation, an online survey (N=107), and in-depth interviews (N=37) with Korean adoptee adults.Item I Am But I Do Not See: Color-Blind Racial Ideology in College Millennials(2017) Cox, Jonathan; Ray, Rashawn; Marsh, Kris; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Research suggests that in the midst of pervasive claims of a post-racial society, it is mostly whites who ascribe to color-blind ideology, while people of color still point to the significance of race. However, we know relatively little about the views of young adults, who have largely come of age during the time of the U.S.’ first black-identifying president. Building upon research done by Bonilla-Silva (2003), and drawing upon from literature on racial ideology and racial identity, my research primarily addresses the following question: In what ways do the racial identities of Millennials impact their utilization or rejection of a color-blind racial ideology? To answer my research question, I conducted a study involving 70 racially diverse college students from four schools in the Washington, D.C. area. Students kept weekly journals about race in their lives for a period of time between 3-12 weeks (n = 65), and I interviewed about half individually following the journaling period (n = 35), with questions focusing on racial identity and racial attitudes. My findings suggest that white college Millennials still utilize the frames and styles of color-blind racism in largely the same ways as the individuals in Bonilla-Silva’s work. Millennials of color use color-blind racism, but typically in more nuanced and even contradictory ways. Millennials of color across all races use color-blindness at similar rates, although some differences emerged across ethnicity. Additional emergent themes include that whites often demonstrate a disconnect between their beliefs about living a diverse life and their actual lives, experience white guilt, and are impacted in complex ways by colorblindness. People of color live more diverse lives than their white peers, believe that race and discrimination are still significant factors in their lives, and may use colorblindness as a coping mechanism. My research brings people of color into conversations about colorblindness in ways that have not been done before. Further, it has implications for understanding racial ideology within the emerging tri-racial system in the U.S., suggesting that the intersection of racial identity and racial ideology within this emerging system may be just as complex as identification itself in the system.Item Marginalized By Race And Place: Occupational Sex Segregation In Post-Apartheid South Africa(2008-07-29) Parashar, Sangeeta; Presser, Harriet B.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Racial and gender disparities found in most other societies are particularly magnified in South Africa where the marginalized social group constitutes a numerical majority of the population. These factors, along with region, are dominant axes of inequality in the country. However, empirical knowledge of the interplay between these systems of social inequality in determining employment outcomes remains somewhat scant. This dissertation addresses that gap by studying occupational sex segregation across various racial groups using multilevel modeling techniques. Individual-level data from the 2001 Census and magisterial-level data from survey data aggregations and published sources are used. I first study the influence of (1) individual (education and migration), (2) household characteristics (family status), and (3) contextual factors (urbanization, former homeland residence, industrial composition, and culture) on women's likelihood of being in white- and blue-collar male-dominated occupations. I then investigate whether the effects of these individual and contextual characteristics on occupational placement vary across the four main racial groups (i.e., black African, Coloureds, Asian-Indians, and Whites)? That is, do these factors interact differently for different racial groups? Results from the analyses indicate that high concentrations of service industries tend increased women's opportunities for holding white-collar male-dominated occupations. On the other hand, while black African women's placement in male-dominated jobs is not influenced by urbanization, women of other races, particularly Coloureds and Whites, fare better in urban districts. In fact, residence in and around homelands was particularly significant for black Africans who are still trying to gain a foothold in mainstream South African society. In the unique case of Indian women, labor supply factors such as education, have greater predictive power than macro-level demand factors. In terms of human supply variables, educational attainment improves women's chances of holding male-dominated occupations among white collar workers across all racial groups; the effect is not as strong among blue-collar workers. However, returns to education are not as high as expected. Migration is significant for only black Africans, highlighting the legacy of apartheid. Finally, women's marital status and associated short-term child bearing obligations do not act as impediments to their occupational choices.Item The Presentation of Slavery at Mount Vernon: Power Priviledge, and Historical Truth(2005-06-22) McGill, Keeley; Moghadam, Linda; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Although the labor of enslaved Africans and Black Americans played a large part in the history of colonial America, the presentation of slavery at George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens is, for the most part, incomplete and leaves visitors with an inaccurate impression of the reality of slavery. This research utilizes questionnaires completed by visitors on-site and field observations of various historical interpretations at Mount Vernon to answer two major research questions: (1) How is slavery portrayed at Mount Vernon? and (2) To what degree are visitors critical of the story of slavery told at Mount Vernon? The results indicated that the presentation of slavery is inconsistent and that the history of slaves at Mount Vernon is marginalized and easily avoided by most visitors.