Sociology

The article draws on the narratives of 40 migrants from Ukraine intermarried with Polish citizens, shedding light on their subjective dimensions of mobility and social positioning. The research captures the diversity of migration trajectories and socio-demographics and explores how individuals construct their own definitions of success and failure that guide their actions. It also investigates their perceptions of stratification systems in Ukraine and Poland, offering insights into the structural conditions shaping intermarried migrants’ social positioning and opportunities for advancement. The analysis indicates three non-linear pathways of social mobility through entrepreneurship, utilisation of cultural capital and legalisation of stay, challenging the assumptions on straightforward vertical mobility of intermarried migrants.

This article analyses the micro-social processes of interaction that can be found in the domain of ‘everynight life’. Drawing on Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective and the symbolic interactionist tradition, it explores the negotiated meanings of social behaviour in nocturnal spaces. These definitions emerge in relation to situational rules and expectations about appropriate conduct. Using Goffman’s concept of ‘action’ and building on Becker’s model of deviance, I suggest a four-fold typology of dramaturgical zones, categorised along dimensions of visibility and legitimacy. In each zone, I identify three dramaturgical techniques used by actors and their audiences to perform and manage impressions of ambiguous nocturnal presence. Sometimes, people want to be seen at night, while at other times, they wish to be hidden. Whether and how they accomplish this depends upon a dynamic conversation of imputed motives, normative judgements and social accountability.

Elites are often offered prestigious state prizes and awards. Although most elites accept, prestigious prizes constitute a challenge for others since institutional symbolic capital cannot be merely accepted, but requires careful negotiation and management. This article investigates the dilemma of being consecrated by the state by studying civil society elites’ reception and use of royal honours, the UK’s most prestigious voluntary and charity work award. We theorise different positionings towards state consecration as elite strategies for downplaying distinction, which enable the maintenance of social hierarchy and transformation of symbolic capital into other resources. Based on an interview study we identify three elite positionings on the offer (‘acceptance’, ‘ambivalence’ and ‘rejection’) and associated practices of capital transformation. Although much prize research has focused on acceptance as a prerequisite for social, cultural and financial advantages, the article shows that some elites benefit more from rejection or ambivalent acceptance of a state prize.

This study examines how women’s access to resources, power in relationships and husbands’ gender role attitudes affect contraceptive decisions in India. Relational empowerment, a woman’s agency within her relationship, influences the extent to which resources translate into contraceptive control. While increased resources may empower women to negotiate within their relationships, traditional gender norms can constrain their autonomy, even when they feel empowered. Using data from a large Indian survey, the National Family Health Survey-5, which includes 37,889 couples, we find that women earning more than their husbands have greater relational empowerment and contraceptive control. This link weakens when husbands hold traditional gender views. Our findings show that supporting women’s reproductive rights requires addressing both resource inequalities and harmful gender beliefs.

This article investigates how leisure activities inform identification processes among British Bangladeshi Muslim women in Tower Hamlets, London. Focusing on women-only events organised in community centres that cater to British Bangladeshi women, we explore the significance of these spaces in the negotiation and maintenance of identity and community. Based on a two-year ethnography conducted as part of the research project Migrant Memory and Postcolonial Imagination, we argue that women-only leisure activities are part of a strategy of momentary self-exclusion, which is central to the articulation of a politics of location for participating women. The focus on leisure contributes to the literature on diaspora studies by providing a more holistic understanding of questions of belonging.

Self-employment accounts for a significant share of income-producing work but the ‘sociology of self-employment’ remains embryonic. This article argues that, to date, sociologists have viewed self-employment through discrete lenses, rooted in different intellectual traditions. A novel typology is developed that conceptually maps extant analyses, revealing the variety of ways these lenses portray the relationship of self-employment to capitalism. The identified lenses are: (1) self-employment as residual; (2) self-employment as dynamic; (3) self-employment as hyper-exploitation; (4) self-employment as mundane; and (5) self-employment as ideology. The article suggests that the empirical complexity of self-employment as a phenomenon underpins this multiplicity of sociological conceptualisations. Self-employment is both driver and residuum of capitalist development; self-employed labour both potential (or at least putative) capitalist enterprise and the absence of waged-labour. Reconciling the sociology of self-employment requires we recognise and embrace this complexity for what it tells us about the conditions of work in contemporary capitalism.

The fantasy of traditional motherhood, according to which women find fulfilment through family care, still dominates market texts. However, there is increasing acknowledgement of motherhood’s difficulties, often in the very same texts. This tension is not immediately understandable; neither are its political and economic implications. We propose an explanation by deploying a Berlantian framework to analyse the new media presence of five brands targeting UK mothers. We identify a mothers’ culture: a market where motherhood’s difficulties are organised incessantly. We argue that mothers’ culture simultaneously validates traditional motherhood’s power to achieve the good life and provides therapeutic explanations and tactics to retain optimism when its lived experiences become too far removed from the fantasy of that good life. Combined, these mechanisms absorb the difficulties of traditional motherhood in a way that protects its promises of fulfilment. This prevents a questioning of the system of norms that effectively blocks this fulfilment.

This study re-examines volunteering through Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, arguing that in Germany and other western countries, volunteering functions as a means of accumulating symbolic capital (i.e. social recognition and status). Individuals from higher social classes are increasingly investing in this field, thereby restricting access for those from lower classes. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (1992–2017) and the German Survey on Volunteering (2014), I examine class-based differences in overall volunteering and specific activities linked to varying levels of symbolic capital. Panel analyses indicate that higher social classes have intensified their engagement in volunteering over the past decades, widening the gap with lower social classes. Furthermore, individuals from higher social classes prefer prestigious volunteering activities that facilitate symbolic capital accumulation. This trend has contributed to a long-term increase in class disparities in volunteering, reinforcing social inequalities and limiting opportunities for lower-class participation.

The article introduces the concept of synthetic involvement to explore how participants in digital interactions navigate virtual and physical situations simultaneously. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on videoconferencing training courses and extending Goffman’s theory of performance, it conceptualises this simultaneity as a major performative challenge and source of uncertainty for participants. The training courses frame the juxtaposition of a virtual and physical situation as something to be actively managed by participants as they learn to see and use videoconferencing tools, their bodies and spaces in new and interconnected ways. The concept of synthetic involvement extends the phenomenological focus on the experienced and felt dimensions of digital co-presence, offering an understanding of digital co-presence as socio-technical performances. In doing so, it also opens up new perspectives on issues such as the planning of a ‘stage setting’ or privacy concerns in (work-related) videoconferencing.

This article investigates how conflicts emerge and unfold among newly cohabiting couples during the daily practices of making and sharing dinner. Adopting a ‘moments approach’, findings from an ethnographic study involving 12 couples reveal how conflictual moments emerge from clashes between individuals’ dispositions regarding responsibilities (who does what), standards (what is appropriate) and techniques (how things are done). Clashes are reflected upon through a process of zooming in and zooming out where conflicting gendered, classed and cultural dispositions emerge. At the conceptual level, conflictual moments are identified as epistemic and affective scenarios revealing broader structural and socio-cultural inequalities permeating domestic life of heterosexual couples.

Friendship and social support are critical for mental health, yet little is known about how these relationships vary across socioeconomic status, especially during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines the protective effects of friendship on well-being during the pandemic and how these effects differ by income level. Using data from the nationally representative DSL-COVID survey of US adults (N = 1862), we analyze the frequency of socializing with friends and its association with well-being across income groups. Higher-income individuals socialize with friends about 0.3 times more per week than their lower-income counterparts. Importantly, time spent with friends has a significantly stronger positive association with well-being among low-income individuals (β = 0.0385, p < 0.001). These findings suggest that friendships play a disproportionately protective role for economically vulnerable individuals, buffering the mental health effects of economic precarity. Our study highlights the unequal yet essential role of social relationships in mitigating mental health disparities during times of crisis.