We checked 6 sociology journals on Friday, November 21, 2025 using the Crossref API. For the period November 14 to November 20, we retrieved 9 new paper(s) in 2 journal(s).

European Sociological Review

Fragmentation or integration? Ethnic diversity and the structural cohesion of adolescent social networks
Georg Lorenz, Camilla Rjosk
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This paper addresses a key yet untested proposition in social cohesion research: ethnic diversity fragments social networks and leads to an overall reduction in network connectivity—that is, a decline in structural cohesion. Homophily might lower structural cohesion especially in contexts where just a few ethnic groups of similar size are present (i.e., at medium diversity levels) and where ethnic boundaries coincide with other demographic differences such as along gender and socioeconomic status, a pattern known as attribute consolidation. However, structural cohesion might be higher again in very diverse contexts, where other network mechanisms, including sociability, may override ethnic homophily. We analyse the structure of friendship networks as they emerge in N = 1,318 German school classrooms to test these claims. Results show that structural cohesion is lowest in classrooms with medium ethnic diversity. Networks there are more fragmented than in both homogeneous and highly diverse classrooms, where they are better connected. However, the correlations are very small, suggesting that network fragmentation in diverse schools is not substantial. Further, attribute consolidation is unrelated to structural cohesion. These findings suggest that even though ethnic homophily shapes adolescents’ friendship formation , it seems to have only a minor influence on the structural cohesion of the emerging friendship networks.
Does more education lower the barriers to social mobility? An analysis of three birth cohorts during a period of educational expansion in Brazil
Andre Salata, Sin Yi Cheung
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Research in social stratification has long posited that the direct effects of social origin on destination are diminished for individuals with higher education, positioning educational expansion as a potential equalizing force. However, recent studies have raised doubts about this claim, suggesting that the equalization hypothesis remains unresolved. In this study, we contribute to the ongoing debate by analyzing data from three birth cohorts in Brazil, spanning a period of rapid educational expansion. We investigate class mobility, status attainment, and the likelihood of entering non-manual occupations. Our findings indicate that achieving higher educational levels weakens the association between social origin and destination for both sexes in the older cohort. Conversely, in younger cohorts born after the educational expansion, mobility prospects for the highly educated are not significantly better than for those with lower levels of education. In other words, educational expansion in Brazil has not succeeded in weakening the direct link between origins and destinations for highly educated individuals. We argue that these results reflect the positionality of education, whereby the impact of a given credential diminishes as the educational system expands, thereby weakening the ‘composition effect.’
When are you coming back? Effect of state-subsidized and employer-sponsored childcare on mothers’ return to work
Anne-Kathrin Kronberg, Anna Gerlach
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After giving birth, higher-educated mothers return to work faster and stay with their pre-birth employer more often than mothers with less education. To facilitate more equitable return patterns, public policy and organizational scholars point to state-subsidized and employer-sponsored childcare as potential solutions. We ask how these two childcare approaches affect mothers’ education-specific return timing and destination (pre-birth employer or new employer). Our paper combines representative German linked employer-employee data (LIAB) with county-level childcare information from 2007 to 2019 to address this question. We demonstrate that better state-subsidized childcare reduces education-specific differences in how quickly mothers return to their pre-birth employer. However, equalizing effects decline at the very bottom of the educational spectrum. The equalizing effect also partially extends to employer-sponsored childcare assistance, especially when state-subsidized care is scarce. Nevertheless, employer assistance cannot fully compensate for a lack of state-subsidized infrastructure or prevent mothers’ turnover to a new company. Thus, state-subsidized childcare plays a central role in understanding mothers’ returns to work. We discuss policy implications and how our findings extend beyond the German context.
Beyond the cradle: effects of family income in the first 1,000 days on educational achievement later in life
Dana Shay, Yossi Shavit, Isaac Sasson
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This study examines the impact of family income across various developmental stages of early and later childhood on educational achievement in fifth-grade among Israeli students born between 2000 and 2005. Utilizing administrative data, we analyze the effects of family income during distinct childhood segments, with a particular focus on the critical first 1,000 days of life. Our findings reveal that family income during this early period—from the beginning of pregnancy up to the child's second birthday—has a pronounced and lasting effect on educational outcomes, significantly surpassing the effects of family income in subsequent age segments. Notably, these early effects remain large and significant despite later changes in family income. This research highlights the importance of considering specific age segments within early childhood to achieve a comprehensive understanding of educational stratification dynamics. By delineating the critical role of early-life socioeconomic conditions, this research contributes valuable insights into the factors shaping long-term educational achievement.
Professors in the media: dynamics of cumulative advantage, reputation, and gender
Raphael H Heiberger, Bas Hofstra, SaĂŻd Unger
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Translation of science to a general public is increasingly important in modern academia. Yet, there is little knowledge on whether and why scientists do so. Here, we provide an account of a population of social science professors in Germany (N = 2,207). We ask whether and to what extent scientists appear in German printed media (N = 26,729) as a result of cumulative advantage, reputation, and gender. We link bibliometric data on professors’ careers and data on their appearances in printed media through unique, principled crosswalks of different databases. Departing from the literature on inequality in science, we develop hypotheses on how cumulative advantage, reputation, and gender relate to professors’ media appearances. Employing a series of longitudinal logistic and linear regression analyses we find support for the majority of our conjectures. Cumulative advantages are particularly positively related to newspaper appearances. Once a scientist has been mentioned in the media they seem ‘short-listed’ and this dynamic is more pronounced among men rather than women professors. Reputable professors are also more likely to be in printed news. And men have a higher frequency of newspaper appearances than women, which seems driven by men more likely to be top mediagenic professors. We discuss the implications of these results for media practice and science evaluation.
Can a motherhood premium in public transfer income offset the Danish motherhood earnings penalty?
Therese Bay-Smidt Christensen, Alexandra Killewald
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Scholarship on motherhood's financial consequences has largely focused on the labour market, finding a motherhood earnings penalty across a wide range of countries. Yet, motherhood may also alter women's financial relationship to the state through transfers such as publicly funded paid parental leave and child allowances. We examine how motherhood affects the income women receive from both the labour market and the state and how these effects together determine motherhood's effect on the total income women receive. We draw on Danish register data and use a combination of coarsened exact matching and difference-in-differences models to estimate the effects of motherhood on labour income, public transfer income, and their sum. We find that motherhood leads to cumulative lost labour income of about 120,000 USD two decades after the first birth. However, these losses are substantially offset by a cumulative public transfer income premium of about 98,000 USD: net of transfers, mothers’ cumulative lost personal income is only about 23,000 USD. Our results pave the way for future research that considers contextual variation in motherhood's effects on both labour and public transfer income.

Social Forces

Managing motherhood: how “queen bee” managers in the US service sector reduce motherhood advantages in work scheduling
Joshua Choper
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This study advances sociological theories of motherhood-based workplace inequalities by examining how frontline managers shape mothers’ access to stable work schedules in the US service sector. Prior research has shown that mothers in the US service sector experience intense conflict between the time demands of motherhood and employers’ expectations that employees will be available to work unstable work schedules, yet little work has investigated sources of variation in mothers’ exposure to schedule instability. Building on and synthesizing theories of homophily, expectation states theory, and “queen bee” theories of women in management, I propose a model in which managers’ own gender and parenthood status structure their responses to their employees’ scheduling needs. Female managers who are mothers are theorized to exhibit homophily and produce motherhood scheduling advantages, while female managers without children are expected to penalize mothers. Analyses of survey and experimental data collected from a large national sample of US retail and food service workers support this theoretical synthesis, showing that motherhood advantages in scheduling appear under male managers and female managers who are mothers, but erode under female managers without children. By positioning motherhood—not gender alone—as the status dimension that most directly collides with ideal worker norms, this work highlights an important determinant of when women in management act as agents of change and when they reinforce inequality. More broadly, this study frames managerial discretion as a key mechanism linking status expectations, manager-employee relations, and organizational outcomes, advancing theory on the micro-foundations of workplace inequality.
Institutional contestations and educational equity: incorporation of the marginalized in National Education Policies Worldwide, 1960–2019
Jieun Song
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The notion that everyone deserves education and that governments need to strive for this ideal has been legitimized and expanded worldwide over the past few decades, as a central part of the successful establishment of a liberal world order. However, the recent resurgence of global illiberalism poses a threat to liberal ideas of equity and diversity, potentially impeding progress toward a more inclusive education system. Against this backdrop, I investigate the extent to which countries around the world introduced policies to incorporate historically disadvantaged populations into education between 1960 and 2019 and what sociocultural factors are associated with the adoption of education policies for the marginalized. Using event count analyses and a novel longitudinal dataset on global education reforms, I show that countries are more likely to adopt education policies for the marginalized when liberalism is globally prevalent, while they are less likely to do so when illiberalism is globally prominent. I also find that countries’ linkages to international liberal or illiberal institutions, including through organized transnational networks, as well as domestic sociopolitical environments, relate to the adoption of education policies for the marginalized. These results help illuminate how countries exist in a world filled with opposing cultural models and through which mechanisms their approaches to educational equity are shaped by such global forces. While focused on education for the marginalized, these findings offer insights into understanding inequality in a changing world context of growing illiberalism.
Do university-educated families lose their edge as education expands? The withering performance and advantage of their children
Manuel T Valdés, Fabrizio Bernardi, Ilaria Lievore
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Extensive research has examined the effect of educational expansion in one cohort on educational inequality and occupational returns in that same cohort. This study makes a novel contribution by exploring whether the expansion of university education among parents affects their children’s academic achievement. We argue that this expansion reduces the selectivity of university attainment, making graduates progressively less selected on traits relevant to their children’s achievement. Additionally, expansion likely diminishes occupational returns on a university degree, increasing the proportion of overqualified university-graduated parents. Consequently, the average achievement of children from university-educated families should diminish with this expansion among parents. Using data from 30 countries across seven waves of the Program for International Student Assessment, we show that students from university-educated families experience a notable decline in achievement as the proportion of university-educated parents increases. Importantly, the growing over-qualification of university-educated parents and the diminishing objectified cultural capital of university-educated families mediate this negative effect. Furthermore, we also observe a negative association between educational expansion among parents and children’s achievement in non-university-educated families, but less pronounced, resulting in a negative (albeit modest) association between expansion among parents and inequality among children.