Professor
Mark Ellis
Department
of Geography
Smith
406C
Tel:
616-6207
Email: ellism@u.washington.edu
This
course examines the employment of immigrant and minorities in the United
States. There is a large,
interdisciplinary literature on the place of diverse ethnic groups in the US
labor market. It examines a wide range
of overlapping issues including, but not restricted to discrimination, the
concentration of groups in particular occupations and industries, job queues,
ethnic networks, ethnic entrepreneurs, economic restructuring, and the impact
of skill-biased technological change on minority employment chances. I propose to read selections from this
literature that include classics and recent contributions. The material will be drawn largely from
Sociology and Economics with some contributions from Geographers where they
exist.
The
course is organized as a seminar. I
expect you to come prepared to discuss the material in the readings every
week. To encourage you to participate I
will require a 1-2 page memo from everybody discussing some aspect of each
week’s readings, posted online at least
3 hours before class to allow everyone to read them. I will discuss the format and content of
these memos in more detail in the first class. There will be no paper for the class as the
readings will be substantial. There will
be a final take-home exam handed out in week 10. The final will be worth 40% of the grade; the
memos and weekly participation will be worth 60%.
Recommended
books
Braverman
H. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital.
Monthly Review Press
Doeringer
P and Piore M. 1971. Internal Labor Markets and Manpower
Analysis. Heath.
Edwards,
R.1979. Contested Terrain. Basic Books.
Granovetter, M. 1974. Getting a Job.
Chicago.
Piore
M. 1979. Birds of Passage.
Portes
A. (ed) 1995. The Economic Sociology of
Immigration. Russell Sage.
Tilly
C and Tilly C. 1998. Work Under Capitalism. Westview
Waldinger,
R. 1996. Still the Promised City.
Harvard
Waldinger
R and Lichter M. 2003. How the Other Half Works. UC Press
We won’t
read Braverman for any week but I encourage you to do
so independently (and Vicki Smith. 1994. Braverman’s
Legacy: The Labor Process turns 20. Work and Occupations 21; 403-21)
Week
1. Introduction
Week 2: Labor Market Segmentation, Internal Labor Markets
Granovetter: Getting a Job (Chapters 1, 2, 7, pp 139-177)
Doeringer
and Piore: Internal Labor Markets and Manpower
Analysis (Chapters 1,2).
Tilly and Tilly: Work Under
Capitalism (Chapters 1,2, 7, 8)
Waldinger and Lichter: How the
Other Half Works (Chapters 1,2)
Week 3: Social Capital, Networks and Embeddedness
– split in two weeks
Tilly and Tilly:
Capitalist Work and Labor Markets (Chapter 6)
Bourdieu, P. 1985. The Forms of Capital.
In Handbook of Theory and Rsearch for the Sociology
of Education, ed. JG Richardson, 241-258.
New York: Greenwood.
The following are online:
Portes, A. 1998. Social Capital: Its
Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology. Annual Review of Sociology 24:
1-24.
Portes, A. and Sensenbrenner, J. 1993. Embeddedness and Immigration: Notes on the Social
Determinants of Economic Action.
American Journal of Sociology 98: 1320-1350
Granovetter, M. 1973. The Strength of Weak
Ties. American Journal of Sociology. 78: 1360-80.
Granovetter, M. 1985. Economic Action and
Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.
American Journal of Sociology 91. 481-510.
Week 4: More on Networks
Massey D. et al. 1998. Worlds in Motion: Understanding International
Migration at the end of
the Millennium. Oxford: Clarendon
Press (Chapters 1-2)
Piore: Birds of Passage (Chapters 1-4)
Waldinger and Lichter: (Chapters
5-7)
Sassen S. 1995. Immigration and Local Labor Markets. In The
Economic Sociology of
Immigration. Ed. A. Portes. Russell
Sage.
Week 5. Theorizing Labor Market Discrimination
Kirschenman J and Neckerman
K 1991. “’We’d love to hire them but…’ The meaning of race for employers. In
Jencks and Peterson (eds.) The Urban Underclass. Brookings.
The following are online:
Marshall, R. 1974. The Economics
of Discrimination : A Survey. Journal of Economic
Literature v13
Blalock, Hubert M. 1956. "Economic
Discrimination and Negro Increase." American Sociological
Review 21:584-8
Bonacich E. 1972 A Theory of Ethnic
Antagonism: The Split Labor Market. American Sociological Review v37.
Darity W. L Jr. and Mason P. 1998
Evidence on discrimination in employment: codes of color, codes of gender. Journal of Economic Perspectives 12 (2):
63-90.
Arrow, K. 1998. What has Economics to say about racial
discrimination. Journal of Economic Perspectives 12 (2):91-100
Heckman, JL. 1998. Detecting discrimination. Journal of Economic Perspectives 12 (2):
101-16.
Week 6: Job/Labor Queues and Labor Market Sorting
Thurow L. 1975. Generating Inequality. Basic (Chapters 3,4,5)
Reskin B and Roos P. 1990.: Job Queues. Gender Queues. Temple. (Chapters 2,15)
Waldinger: Still the Promised City (Chapters 3,4)
Week 7. Skills Mismatch
Wilson,
W.J. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged. Chicago. (Chapter 2)
Waldinger: Still the Promised City (Chapter
1)
Moss P and Tilly
C. 2001.
Stories Employers Tell. Russell
Sage. (Chapters 3, 4)
The following are online:
Bound
J. and Freeman RB. 1992. What Went
Wrong? The Erosion of Relative Earnings and Employment Among Young Black Men in
the 1980s. Quarterly Journal of Economics.
107 , 201-232.
Juhn, C, Murphy, KM, Pierce, B. Wage Inequality and the Rise
in Returns to Skill. Journal of Political Economy. 1993. 101: 410-442.
Card D, DiNardo
JE 2002 Skill-biased technological
change and rising wage inequality: Some problems and puzzles. Journal of Labor
Economics 20 (4): 733-783
Week 8: Spatial Mismatch
Tilly C, Moss P, Kirschenman
J and Kennelly I. 2001. Space as a Signal: How
Employers Perceive Neighborhoods in Four Metropolitan Labor Markets. In A
O’Connor, C Tilly and LD Bobo
(eds) Urban Inequality. Russell Sage.
The following are online:
Kain, JF. 1968. Housing segregation, Negro employment, and
metropolitan decentralization. Quarterly
Journal of Economics, 82: 175-197
Raphael S. 1998. The spatial
mismatch hypothesis and black youth joblessness: Evidence from the San
Francisco Bay Area J Urban Econ 43 (1): 79-111
Mouw T. 2000 Job relocation and
the racial gap in unemployment in Detroit and Chicago, 1980 to 1990
Am Sociol Rev 65 (5): 730-753
Fernandez, R.M. Race, Space, and Job
Accessibility: Evidence from a Plant Relocation. Economic Geography 70: 390-416
Week 9: Ethnic Niches and Enclaves
The following are online:
Kenneth
Wilson and Alejandro Portes. 1980. Immigrant enclaves: An analysis of the labor
market experiences of Cubans in Miami.
American Journal of Sociology, 86: 295-319.
Jimy Sanders and Victor Nee.
1987. Limits of ethnic solidarity in the
enclave economy. American Sociological Review, 52: 745-773.
Portes A. and Jensen L. 1989 The Enclave
and the Entrants: Patterns of Ethnic Enterprise in Miami Before and After Mariel. American Sociological Review. 54: 929-949.
Correction
by Portes and Jensen.
Response by Sanders and Nee. Rebuttal by Portes
and Jensen. American Sociological Review 1992 57(3).
Ivan
Light, Georges Sabagh, Mehdi
Bozorgmehr, and Claudia Der-Martirosian
1994. Beyond the ethnic enclave economy. Social Problems. 41: 65-80.
Waldinger Roger 1993. The ethnic enclave debate revisited.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17: 444-452.
Edin
Per-Anders; Fredriksson Peter; Åslund Olof 2003 Ethnic Enclaves And The
Economic Success Of Immigrants - Evidence From A Natural Experiment. Quarterly
Journal of Economics. 118 (1): 329 -- 357
Week
10: Places/Contexts/Futures
McCall L. 2001. Complex Inequality. Routledge
(Chapters 2,3)
Waldinger and Lichter: (Chapter
12)
The following are online:
McCall L 2001 Sources of racial
wage inequality in metropolitan labor markets: Racial, ethnic, and gender
differences Am Sociol Rev 66 (4): 520-541
Ellis M. 2001. A Tale of Five Cities. In R Waldinger (ed.) Strangers at the Gates. Univ
of Calif. Press
Waldinger R 1996. From Ellis Island
to LAX: Immigrant prospects in the American city Int
Migr Rev 30 (4): 1078-1086