Department of Sociology

David FitzGerald, professor of sociology at UCSD spoke with the French publication Liberation about his book “Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas.” Read the full article online here.

The Washington Post has published an article written by UCSD professor of sociology Amy Binder. Her article titles “There’s a well-funded campus industry behind the Ann Coulter incident” discusses how some conservative campus organizations, often the most well-funded, thrive on confrontation and how there’s a lot of organization behind these types if events. In the article, Amy Binder writes:

David FitzGerald, professor of Sociology at UCSD and Co-Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, was invited as a guest at ABC News Australia to speak about the Trump Administration’s bid to curb illegal immigration from Mexico. In the interview, he says:

“What’s interesting is what he didn’t talk about, which is that apprehensions of irregular migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border are actually at historic lows. They’re at the lowest level that we’ve seen since the early 1970s and in many way the idea of building a 21, or even more, billion dollar wall is a solution looking for a problem.”

Click here to watch the full interview on the ABC News Australia website.

In an article for Foreign Affairs, Lane Kenworthy of the UCSD Sociology Department writes about The Real American Jobs Crisis. He explains how in the U.S., the employment rate rose steadily throughout the second half of the 20th century which stood out among affluent democracies and prompted the U.S. to be known as “the great American jobs machine’. However, since the start of the 21st century, the employment rate has decreased. In the article, Kenworthy aims to define the problem behind this issue and claims that better family policies can help.

This article is only part two of a two-part series. Read Part two here, which examines the decline in men’s employment in the U.S. since the late 20th century.

In an article for Foreign Affairs, Lane Kenworthy of the UCSD Sociology Department writes about The Trouble With Male Unemployment. He explains how the employment rate among prime working-age men has been falling fro nearly half a century and described this problem as catastrophic and urgent. In the article, he aims to answer the question what caused the crisis? and claims that benefit-cutting won’t help.

This article is only part one of a two-part series. Read Part two here, which examines the US’ employment performance in recent years.

Prfessor Lane Kenworthy of Sociology was featured in the Spring 2017 issue of Accounts on Economic Sociology and Inequality. The contributions in this issue show the wide variation in the topics addressed in high quality research by Section members. It also brings to attention the outstanding contributions of the Accounts co-editors, who initiated informative interviews with scholars who are breaking new ground in the field of economic sociology.

In the Interview, Lane Kenworthy and David Grusky discuss the topic of policy engagement. Kenworthy describes what it means to him and how he initially got involved. He explains:

 ​My policy engagement has consisted mainly of researching policy-relevant issues and trying to convey my findings to audiences beyond academia. I’ve always been interested in “big” questions, though not always policy-relevant ones. As an undergraduate and in my first two years of graduate school, the kinds of questions that most interested me were: What did the 1960s social movements accomplish? What is the class structure of advanced capitalist societies? What are the advantages and disadvantages of different types of capitalism and socialism?

Gershon Shafir of the UCSD Department of Sociology wrote an article published on Forward in which he discusses how the Israeli settler movement isn’t much of a movement. In the article he writes:

“In short, the settlement project has not created the conditions for the annexation of the West Bank to Israel nor made it inevitable. The turn to blunt tools of politics is an indirect admission that the 50 years of colonization have stalled.”