Sociological Research Online

The professional kitchen is an often hostile and dangerous environment. This article explores the connection between the enactment of care in this environment with the supply of both labour and produce. Drawing on qualitative research in restaurants in the North East of England, findings identify three important factors in the organisation of care. First, that professional chefs operate with an uneven logistical imaginary that influences how they imagine the long-term viability of food supply chains. Second, that restrictions in labour supply precipitate opposing forces: in one direction, an increase in the value of labour of chefs; and in the other, the deskilling of the professional kitchen. And third, that accelerated promotion through the traditional hierarchy of the professional kitchen destabilises the organisation of communitas, leading to withdrawal of care to those deemed to occupy undeserved positions. These factors interrelate in the following ways: food insecurity and supply chain disruption lead to effective deskilling as restaurant menus are simplified; deskilling is locked in when it coincides with restriction in the supply of chefs, which leads to accelerated promotion and redundancy of specialised sections; and deskilling motivates the withdrawal of care, as those in a position to nurture colleagues withhold this labour both out of a sense of injustice and because of increased intensification of work. It is concluded that the future of the professional kitchen hinges on the balance of the finite supply of produce and of labour with the renewable but fragile dimension of care.

Scholars disagree on whether rising gender equality undermines family life (by eroding the traditional specialization of roles) or, conversely, renews it once men’s involvement in unpaid care catches up with women’s employment. Building on the ‘two-stage gender revolution’ perspective, this article distinguishes equality in the public sphere from equality in the domestic sphere and asks how different combinations of the two relate to perceived costs of parenthood. A hierarchical cluster analysis yields three regimes: ‘symmetric roles’ (Nordic countries), ‘women second shift’ (France, Belgium, Portugal, Austria), and ‘traditional arrangements’ (Ireland, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Netherlands). I then relate regimes to items capturing the perceived costs of parenthood (financial burden, loss of freedom, career limits). Results show a clear inverted-U relationship: among cohabiting parents, perceived costs are highest in the women second shift regime, while both the symmetric and traditional regimes exhibit lower perceived costs. The findings update earlier evidence linking equality to family pessimism by showing that where the second gender revolution (shared care) has advanced, parents report lower perceived constraints associated with having children, whereas stalled domestic change amplifies perceived costs.

The EU Settlement Scheme has sought to provide a legal framework for the residence of European Union citizens in post-Brexit Britain. In the meantime, digital communities have emerged, seeking to mitigate the errors, delays, and communication gaps that have plagued the scheme since its inception. Engaging with scholarship on digital place-making, this paper discusses a yearlong digital ethnography conducted in four Facebook communities and a visual analysis of the content shared by applicants. We deployed a mixed-method strategy to map group membership while analysing the language of uncertainty in posts. Results indicate a complex space of advice-seeking, reproducing much of the scheme’s bureaucratic nature and weakening these spaces’ potential for demonstrating alternative forms of solidarity.

A considerable amount of the knowledge produced by qualitative research is constructed with the use of interview methods. In this methodological space, interview location is largely discussed pragmatically, reduced to a technical consideration for the data collection stage. Subsequently, the methodological importance of interview location is underexplored, and the generative potential of different interview sites undertheorised. This article draws on empirical work conducted in the field of criminology as an exemplar to inform other qualitative researchers in the social sciences – particularly those interested in narrative methodologies. Utilising conceptualisations of ‘space’ and ‘place’ the article illustrates how different locations influence the richness and depth of participant storytelling, and facilitate or inhibit the construction of spatially specific narrative identities. The contribution this makes is twofold. First, the article illustrates how conceptualising interview location as part of the methodological and analytical process enables the researcher to take seriously its role in the production of knowledge, contributing to the overall transparency and rigour of the research. Second, the article demonstrates how conceptualising participant safety in different spaces as having emotional and psychological dimensions enhances ethical practice for narrative work in particular.

As artificial intelligence (AI)-generated personas and deepfakes become increasingly sophisticated, online qualitative research faces urgent challenges to trust and authenticity. This commentary explores how hyperreal digital deception intersects with core qualitative commitments to care, access, and participant co-authorship. Drawing on crip, feminist, and decolonial methodologies, we critique the limitations of verification practices – such as mandatory video or ID checks – that often reinforce ableist, racialized, and classed norms of believability. Rather than turning to surveillance, we propose relational ethics and practical strategies to navigate AI deception with discernment. We argue for new frameworks that uphold research integrity while protecting participant dignity in the digital age.

Young voices are underrepresented in research, policy, and practice. This visual essay showcases the photography of nine young people and examines through their work the concept of ‘home’ within the context of transitional and short-term accommodation for disadvantaged youth. Drawing insights from a collaborative Photovoice project undertaken with a not-for-profit youth support organisation (YSO) in 2023, we explore the possibilities for how applied sociological research can function as a form of social action. The young people extended the Photovoice prompt beyond the traditional sociological parameters of ‘home’, pushing the research to engage with nuanced understandings of how growing up with family complexity, instability, and poverty can shape their transitions to adulthood.

This paper explores how parents construct and manage risks in their children’s post-digital lives, including how they respond to news media, public discourse, and everyday concerns about online safety and well-being. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative study conducted with 30 parents in England, we analyse how risk is framed through spatial, symbolic, and relational logics that reflect broader socio-cultural anxieties. While digital risks are typically framed as distinct and exceptional, our findings suggest parents struggle to sustain clear boundaries between online and offline harms. We identify four interrelated themes: how parents distinguish between online and offline risks; how threats are imagined as both close to home and distant; how digital life produces uncertainty about what is real or trustworthy; and how parents develop different strategies for managing their children’s digital lives depending on their experiences, emotions, and resources. These findings are situated within the ecological and post-digital theoretical frameworks, highlighting how parental sense-making is shaped not only by digital technologies but also by emotional labour, cultural narratives, and institutional failures. We argue that risk is not simply managed at the individual or family level but negotiated within complex social ecologies. The paper contributes to digital parenting, childhood risk, and the post-digital condition, calling for responses that move beyond binary logics and recognise the interdependent, emotionally charged and structurally embedded nature of contemporary parenting.

This article refines territorial stigma theory by analysing how residents in three disadvantaged Dutch neighbourhoods respond to stigma through four distinct moral coping strategies. Drawing on 216 in-depth interviews, we identify and theorise the following patterns: moral boundary work, where residents distinguish ‘decent’ from ‘disorderly’ neighbours; moral classifications of deservingness, where the poor are divided into the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’; empathetic reframing of stigma, where problematic behaviour is humanised as a response to hardship; and withdrawal and internalised stigma, where residents disengage from community life and adopt negative views of their surroundings. These strategies cut across ethnic lines and serve to assert personal worth, accumulate symbolic capital, and manage stigma. However, they also produce intra-community fragmentation and reproduce symbolic violence, echoing Bourdieu. Rather than viewing internalised stigma solely as private shame, we show how it manifests in peer regulation, horizontal blame, and social retreat. While many responses reinforce stigma, instances of empathy and collective pride highlight the ambivalence of moral boundary work – as both a source of exclusion and a potential foundation for solidarity.

This article explores how the COVID-19 (post)pandemic crisis has reshaped young people’s experiences and perceptions of work stability. Drawing on unique longitudinal qualitative data collected over an 8-year period, the study examines changes in perceptions of occupational stability among young Polish adults with international mobility experiences, focusing on two contrasting case studies that illustrate pre- and post-pandemic narratives. The analysis combines narrative and thematic approaches to trace how participants make sense of changing work conditions over time. The findings highlight the pandemic’s role as an ‘unsettling event’ that redefined the meaning of stability. The study argues for situating the pandemic within a continuum of overlapping crises, contributing to a nuanced understanding of young people’s labour market experiences amid intensifying global uncertainty.

This case study analyses the impact of intermediate mock exams in a first-year statistics course on the social inequalities observed in tertiary education. Through descriptive analysis and regression models of a sample of 478 students, we examine how these exams influence subsequent educational decisions. Our hypothesis states that students without a university-educated parent are more likely to attribute failure to innate ability, impacting their participation in subsequent exams. Findings reveal a decline in participation rates over the semester, with disparities between students with and without university-educated parents, the latter demonstrating higher participation and pass rates. Students without a university-educated parent are more influenced by negative results in subsequent participation decisions compared to their peers with a university-educated parent.

In this article, I reflect on my history, relationship, and experiences with Sociological Research Online (SRO), its role in and influence on different aspects of my career, including being the journal where I published my first academic article and first served on an editorial board, as well as its importance within academic publishing and Sociology itself. The piece is divided into two sections representing different aspects of my connection: Research, Publishing, and Teaching and Editing and Engagement.

Online methods are becoming increasingly normalised in qualitative social research due to their benefits, low-cost and ease of access. Yet, they can pose risks for social researchers who are using such methods in their work. This article presents some reflections on these topics based on a range of inauthentic responses – including ‘bots’ and real people who were not always ‘authentic’ – to a research project exploring graduates perspectives of in-work precarity. We argue for reflexive and considered approaches in sociological research that can parse different forms of identity in online social research contexts, through exploring identity and lived experience. Our contribution is to emphasise some of the messiness of social research as a continuous socially embodied process and reflect on our sought connection to lived experiential data when using online methods.

Public square dancing (PSD), a popular form of social dance, has captivated the hearts of older Chinese citizens and has become a widespread social phenomenon in China. Supporters argue that PSD has brought many positive effects to its members and urban areas, while critics believe it has caused various spatial and social problems within society. Drawing on research conducted within PSD groups in Huai’an City, it uncovers critical insights into the mechanisms that foster dynamism in PSD and investigates the ways in which individuals construct collective behaviour and social relations in public spaces. It redefines public space not merely as a physical container but as a socially contested and constructed domain where social relations and elderly activities intersect. PSD functions as a response to the needs of senior citizens while also acting as a catalyst for reimagining the relationship between PSD members and other users of public space.

This article evaluates the extent to which the recent ‘single positivity movement’ has reconfigured representations of single womanhood in the UK. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 19 heterosexual women, aged 21–52, I argue that, in a postfeminist and neoliberal culture where heterosexual women have been encouraged to ‘dump him’ and prioritise their self and happiness, to free themselves from heteropatriarchal constraints, single womanhood has been transformed into an identity characterised by self-discovery, self-prioritisation, and self-love. In light of this movement, I find that some heterosexual women have become defiantly single and are unwilling to settle for the sake of settling down, choosing only to revoke their single status should a partner contribute to their already fulfilled lives. However, for most women in this study, while singlehood offered them a period of liberation to find themselves, prioritise themselves, and love themselves, this was dependent on their life-course stage, with an apparent temporal limit to single positivity. Therefore, despite a pervasive narrative of single positivity, which has seemingly facilitated a newfound acceptance to single womanhood, this article concluded that while singlehood is celebrated, and encouraged, as a temporary phase for women in their twenties, the couple norm is maintained as the dominant social form.

Studies on social mobility, particularly those with quantitative orientation, often present mobility rates without accounting for the contextual continuity in which individual life and career trajectories develop. Yet, social structure is not a static backdrop upon which individuals act. This study argues that processes of political, legal, and economic transformation can reconfigure structures of inequality, shift hierarchies, and alter corresponding rewards, thereby reshaping the set of possible pathways and strategies available to individuals. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with individuals who migrated from Turkey to Germany in the 1960s, this article explores how social transformations in both countries have shaped their status-related decisions and mobility strategies over time. The findings reveal that participants’ career trajectories are fragmented and complex rather than linear, constantly recalibrated in relation to shifting social contexts. Like the branches of a tree, these trajectories reach crosspoints that prompt individuals to rethink, reconsider, and reevaluate their aspirations and decisions. These insights contribute to a deeper understanding of how mechanisms transporting individuals from origins to destinations function under evolving historical conditions. Ultimately, the study underscores that social mobility is not a linear or context-free process but a dynamic interplay of structure, agency, and temporality. By integrating qualitative insights, it becomes possible to expose the hidden pathways and lived complexities that quantitative models often obscure.

This article reflects on the state of sociological research craft and the importance of SRO as a publication space that has fostered research innovation and invention for 30 years. Drawing on the author’s own experience of publishing in the journal since 2002, the author develops an argument for the vitality of sociological craft today that operates both within and beyond the text. Despite the austere atmosphere in UK Higher Education, it argues that we are experiencing a contemporary renaissance in qualitative research.