I checked 9 sociology journals on Sunday, November 01, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period October 25 to October 31, I found 15 new paper(s) in 6 journal(s).

American Sociological Review

Incentivizing Equality? How Work-Family Policies Affect Parenthood Penalties in 27 Countries
Allison Dunatchik, Pilar Gonalons-Pons
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Work-family policies are theorized to shape the division of paid labor after parenthood, but recent studies have cast doubt on their importance. Leveraging harmonized longitudinal data spanning 27 countries and an analytic focus on couples and couple dynamics, our study shows that work-family policies do shape how divisions of paid labor change with parenthood, and that they also moderate the importance of couples’ relative resources as a determinant of the division of labor. We find that moderate-length paid maternal leave and greater childcare availability reduce parenthood penalties in couples’ division of paid work time, while prolonged leave exacerbates penalties. Furthermore, by focusing on couples, we provide novel evidence that partners’ relative resources do not operate uniformly across work-family policy contexts, showing that policies can incentivize couples to divide paid work in ways their relative resource profiles would not otherwise predict. We find that moderate-length paid leave and greater childcare availability encourage egalitarianism among male-breadwinner couples, although extended leave encourages greater gender traditionalism among female-breadwinner couples. These findings reveal that classic theories of household specialization and bargaining are not universal, and highlight the need for greater theoretical attention to how country- and couple-level forces interact to shape gender inequality.
Simply a Sign of the Season? Christmas Trees as Cultural Ciphers in Local Government Management of Diversity
Gary J. Adler, Damon Mayrl, Eric Plutzer, Jonathan S. Coley, Rebecca Sager, Elise Wolff
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How do local governments symbolically manage the diversity of their residents? Drawing from an original representative sample of local government officials, we use a novel survey experiment with open-ended survey responses to examine preferences for cultural objects that symbolically manage religious diversity, an axis of difference that is increasingly salient to social conflict. Our experiment randomly varies the content of holiday displays on government property to measure diversity management strategies. Results show that government officials prefer the assimilationist strategy of a Christmas tree—by itself—over multiculturalist and exclusivist strategies, which both include sectarian religious content. Officials also evaluate Christmas trees as the content least likely to signal government endorsement of religion, compared to other holiday displays. We argue that these patterns can be explained by conceiving of a Christmas tree as a cultural cipher, a well-known cultural object that affords a range of meanings and resonates across social identities as innocuous. We argue that cultural ciphers are useful for an assimilationist approach to managing diversity because their ambiguity allows them to act as a vehicle of symbolic inclusion while also sustaining the meanings of majority groups. We also consider how cultural ciphers may lose their power for civic solidarity.
What Do “Most People” Believe? Race, Gender, and the Generalized Other
Natasha Quadlin, Trenton D. Mize, Long Doan, Bianca Manago
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When people form beliefs in social life, they often calibrate their own thinking against what they anticipate “most people” think. Although prior research demonstrates the importance of these inferences, scholars have yet to examine who is best proxied by “most people.” Given persistent inequalities in U.S. society that advantage White men, as well as theories of cultural hegemony, we hypothesize that “most people’s” imagined beliefs are closely proxied by those of White men. We test these ideas using an original survey experiment conducted with a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults ( N = 2,089) in which we adapt 64 core items from the General Social Survey. Respondents were randomly assigned to answer these questions either from the perspective of most people, or from the perspective of designated race-gender groups. Contrary to our hypothesis, we find strong and consistent evidence that White men are not seen as standard-bearers for most social issues. Instead, perceptions of what most people believe are highly aligned with the imagined beliefs of White women. Importantly, this pattern emerges not because White women are seen as influential, but because White women are perceived as less extreme than other groups. We also observe variation across respondents, such that respondents tend to center their own race-gender group in conceptualizing most people’s beliefs (with White women typically close behind).
Who Benefits from Citizenship? Varying Effects of Naturalization Decisions in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States
Peter Catron, Nathan I. Hoffmann, Mingze Li
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Citizenship acquisition is widely viewed as a mechanism for improving economic outcomes, yet little is known about whether its benefits are distributed evenly. This article examines the varied returns to naturalization in the early-twentieth-century United States, assessing whether naturalization uniformly benefits all immigrants or is especially impactful for those already positioned to profit. Using naturalization records from New York City’s Southern District in the early 1900s, we construct a novel historical dataset for 1,947 immigrants who declared their intent to naturalize. By linking these records to U.S. census data from 1920, 1930, and 1940, we are able to observe immigrants’ characteristics at the point when they make naturalization decisions and to track their outcomes over time. Our findings reveal that immigrants who completed the naturalization process attained significantly higher occupational status than those who initiated but did not complete naturalization. In addition, citizenship is most transformative for those facing the greatest disadvantages. Additional analyses corroborate these findings in linked full-count census data for the entire United States. Citizenship confers occupational advantages not only through formal rights but as a resource that enables claims-making in the labor market, with greater returns to less advantaged immigrants.

Social Forces

Beyond economic bargaining power? Work-related internal migration and subjective well-being in couples
Elias Hofmann, Nico Stawarz, Nicolai Netz, Heiko RĂĽger
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Bargaining theory posits that both partners’ utility shapes couples’ migration decisions. Yet, most empirical tests focus on individual incomes, thus overlooking non-economic factors in couples’ deliberations about spatial mobility. We argue that considering holistic indicators of utility, such as subjective well-being, can advance our understanding of couples’ decision-making. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP, 1991–2021) and fixed effects panel regressions, we analyze changes in life satisfaction following work-related internal migration on both individual and dyadic levels. Moreover, we examine whether these changes depend on shifts in partners’ economic bargaining power (EBP, defined as female partners’ share of total household labor income), thereby evaluating the common assumption that couples’ bargaining centers around income. Our results show that, on average, both partners experience increases in their life satisfaction following migration. Distinguishing whether women’s EBP remains unchanged, decreases, or increases with migration, we find that women’s life satisfaction gains are only weakly related to changes in their EBP. In contrast, men’s life satisfaction only increases if their partner’s EBP decreases or remains unchanged, but not if it increases—a pattern consistent with the notion of gendered expectations about the within-couple income distribution hampering men’s well-being gains. Overall, our findings suggest that well-being is an important factor in couples’ migration decision-making and that income-based measures of bargaining power provide only an incomplete account of partners’ bargaining positions.
Review of “Major Trade-Offs: The Surprising Truths About College Majors and Entry-Level Jobs”
Allison L Hurst
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Review of “Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment”
Arne L Kalleberg
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Review of “Defending Democracy in the European Parliament: An Institutional Drama”
Elisabeth Clemens
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Social Networks

Mechanisms reinforcing and countering segregation: How existing friendship and dislike ties impact friendship homophily and dislike heterophily among Muslim and non-Muslim students in German schools
Vieri Pistocchi, Filip Agneessens
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Behind the organizational chart: The emergence of “gurus” in advice networks
Andrea Ancona, Francesco Renzini, Roy Cerqueti, Flaminio Squazzoni
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Social Science Research

The causal packaging effects of punishment for first-time felony holders
Ryan Larson
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Sociological Science

Is it Okay to Use Generative AI in Sociological Research?
Oscar Stuhler, Dustin Stoltz, AJ Alvero, Marshall Taylor
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State-Level Investments in Children and Disparities in Material Hardship
Jiwan Lee, Margot Jackson, Taryn Morrissey, Christopher Wimer
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Socius

Workplace Segregation by Ethnicity and Gender in Israel: The Role of Local Labor Markets, 2000 to 2015
Ludmila Garmash
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The present research joins the growing body of organizational studies that explore workplace segregation. Using unique longitudinal employer-employee data that cover the entire Israeli economy from 2000 to 2015, this article suggests three distinct contributions to the literature. First, it describes previously unexplored patterns and trends in workplace segregation in Israel, uncovering the extreme ethnic segregation between Jews and Arabs, as well as high gender segregation; both are stable over time. Second, it shows that ethnic and gender statuses intersect and produce divergent patterns of segregation over time. Finally, the study demonstrates that the uneven distribution of the workforce across local labor markets (defined as industries within regions) constitutes an important structural source of workplace segregation. At the same time, segregation between workplaces within local labor markets accounts for most of the overall segregation, pointing to the decisive role of organizational processes in shaping workplace segregation. The study also illustrates the potential of nationwide employer-employee data and the utility of the Theil entropy index as a prominent segregation measure for investigating workplace segregation as a complex, context-contingent phenomenon.
As Online Dating Grew, Which Meeting Channels Lost Share among New Unions?
Zerui Tian
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This visualization uses current and retrospective partnership histories from the Generations and Gender Survey, Round 2, to examine how the expansion of online dating corresponded to changes in other partner-meeting channels among 38,772 coresidential unions across 11 countries and regions. Generations and Gender Survey–weighted descriptive estimates distinguish online dating from other online meeting and group offline channels into friends/family, school/work, public/leisure, and residual other settings. Online dating’s share increased in every context between 2002–2004 and 2017–2019, with gains ranging from about 4 to 20 percentage points. Yet the largest offline decline varied: friends/family in six contexts, public/leisure in four, and school/work in one. This heterogeneity suggests that digital intermediation is layered onto context-specific institutions and networks. A separate 2020–2021 end point is shown descriptively but excluded from the channel reallocation comparison because of pandemic disruptions. Adjusted robustness analyses yield substantively similar conclusions. The visualization documents compositional change rather than causal substitution, showing that a common technological expansion coincided with different reallocations across network-based, episodic, and institution-based meeting settings in different social contexts.