Sociology Department Colloquium: Naomi Sugie

Date
Thu February 7th 2019, 12:30pm
Location
McClatchy Hall, Building 120, Studio 40
Sociology Department Colloquium: Naomi Sugie

Please join us for a colloquium being given by Naomi Sugie, Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine.

Work as Foraging: A Smartphone Study of Job Search and Employment after Prison

The past several decades have seen a decline in employment rates and labor force participation, particularly among low-skilled, minority men living in poor areas. As low-skill jobs disappear from poor places, how do marginalized job seekers navigate this landscape? Using over 8,000 daily measures of search and work collected from smartphones distributed to 133 men recently released from prison, this article presents the concept of work as foraging, where people work a variety of extremely precarious opportunities that span across job types. Sequence analysis methods describe distinct patterns of search and work that unfold over time, where most people cease their search efforts after the first month and maintain a state of very irregular and varied work. Although there is substantial heterogeneity in patterns, foraging is a common strategy of survival work.