Week 4: Unemployment and the Informal Economy

Welcome to week four. It's hard to believe it, but we're at the halfway point,

we focus on a lot of really big issues and urban sociology,

we focus on the history of the discipline, we focus on segregation,

we focus on poverty and inequality,

and now we're turning to another important

issue unemployment and the informal economy,

and we have various articles here with the focus on youth

for this week, and thinking about how work

intersects with the transition to adulthood.

Um so first we have a photographic and ethnographic piece on urban violence.

Then I'll talk about the article on youth work histories,

and then we'll talk about joblessness in urban areas.

And so some of these articles are older,

especially the one on youth work histories and the one on joblessness.

So one important thing to remember,

as we're looking at these older articles is to think

about what you feel might still be relevant today,

what issues related to the economy and

employment might still be plaguing urban areas.

And so that will also be related to the questions

that I'll pose at the end of the slide deck.

So, let's get into the first article on urban violence.

This article is titled Becoming a Stickup Kid,

and it's probably the most different from all the articles we've read,

because it focuses really on one individual and his experience of urban violence,

and it traces this through his work history through his life.

Um and we really get to hear his voice through the ethnographers words,

and so becoming a Stickup Kid,

as the title suggests discusses tales of drug robbery and how they become part of the

everyday life for kids in the neighborhood with

the focus on an individual named Tuckey.

Um and we hear how the ethnographer came to this particular

part of the story,

how he heard about drug market violence and how we questioned

how this violence could become so commonplace in the neighborhood.

And like we see in another context article that we read about poverty,

he's encouraging us to move past individualistic and

sociopathic reasoning when it comes to understanding why this

violence is so prevalent and why people so easily

seem to take part in these violent acts.

Instead,

he's pushing us to take the sociological approach that

there is a larger historical and social force behind

The these individuals path towards violence.

And to understand that he presents us with the case or the story of Tuckey.

And so Tuckey was born in the South Bronx during the 1970s.

His father abandoned his family and he was raised

by his mother who worked in formal jobs.

So essentially he grew up poor with little money

and he also attended an underfunded school.

Um There weren't a lot of resources and he really disengaged from school because

he didn't see how it could lead to a path of future success.

There were really limited chances for upward mobility because of his background,

because he didn't have a father in his life.

And

because his school was not providing him with

the resources he would have needed to excel.

And so he looked towards drugs particularly cracked.

So this was the error of um of crack developing.

Um and he looked towards that for a payout and he

started selling drugs and he was able to afford luxuries.

He really felt like he was living the american dream

and he became a legend for his violent ways.

Eventually crack dealing took a hit as it did for many people

beyond just Tuckey and he struggled to really make ends meet.

He felt like he was experiencing poverty all over again.

So he turned towards auto theft and eventually he also turned to drug robberies.

So interwoven through this,

we see how all of these historical in social forces

impact Kentucky and his drug robbery that he engages him.

And the author says so to understand Tuckey,

we must understand how history and social structure intersect with his biography.

Otherwise,

the study of poverty related brutality becomes a distorted enterprise

in which Tuckey and other marginal criminals are improperly portrayed.

So he's saying that we don't really understand

this story of urban violence unless we break down the history and social structure.

So the big picture here is that there's always a social context of violence,

Tuckey found meaning through the illegal drug market

because he was coming of age during a time

when crack was really prevalent when it felt like the only way you could make money,

there weren't a lot of manufacturing jobs.

So this is what young men could turn to.

And he also had this cultural idea around wealth and riches and the american dream.

So he felt that he was able to live

the american dream through these eventual acts of violence.

So Tuckey was born either a drug robber nor a torturer.

His biography emerged with his particular social

context that led him down this path.

Um and so some question to think about that also pose a theory,

and it's how urban violence becomes commonplace for young people who grow up poor,

why the informal economy can become so enticing,

And then how can we understand urban

violence from a structural and historical perspective?

Then the next article focuses on early work histories of urban youth.

So there's a connection here between the informal economy and

really what other options youth might have for work.

Um and they say that white youth of Baltimore

more often held jobs that did african american youth,

even though african americans applied for jobs more often than whites.

Once a white students started school year work,

they were more likely than they were african

americans to work in every subsequent school year.

So what they find is that there is consistency in the type of work

That white youth are able to get.

And we can think about how that might overlap with

Kentucky story about the inability to find those stable options.

And so this study looked at 13-18 year olds in Baltimore.

The study actually followed them from a very early age

and they looked at the transition to adulthood and how work

sort of intersected with that transition,

How it was interlaced with school.

They also thought about limitations because

of socioeconomic background and how their

early experiences with work had an impact even after high school.

The name of the study is the beginning school

study and it focuses on Children living in Baltimore.

They looked at variables like work, job categories,

job levels and consistency of work.

And essentially what they,

what they find is that the timing nature and

consistency of work varied for the people in the

study and that there were differences for whether they

were a part of semi skilled or unskilled work,

which matters for how much money they're making and

for the capital that their work is bringing them

the family background, their school performance,

their race and gender also intersected to shape their access to this work.

The transition to adulthood began earlier for people who started work

and there were always less consistent job options for blacks.

Students who did more poorly had better job opportunities and they're

slightly balanced out for their future work options after high school.

So,

a key quote from this study is that job experience and adolescents can add to

human capital and may improve opportunities for employment

for minority and economically disadvantaged urban youth.

Later on

the dearth of research on the overlap between school and work,

especially for minority group or inner city youngsters has

tended to obscure the allocated effects of early jobs,

but there appear to be marked differences in race and

gender patterns very early in the transition to adulthood.

So having these work experiences early does matter for future prospects,

but there are differences in race and gender

in these work experiences and the transition to adulthood.

Um And then the last article focuses again on segregation and how

we can understand the connection between race segregation and access to jobs.

Um and so this article focuses on the concentration

of jobless men and low-income minority urban areas.

Um and the author kind of gives us a little bit of history by

explaining that jobless men have been more

concentrated and isolated since the 1970s,

and jobless black men have a uniquely disadvantaged position

because they are more isolated from employed men.

They also experience more segregation than men who are employed.

And so they sort of posed this question

at the beginning about why joblessness is important,

and that's really a good place to kind of think about for this particular section.

Why does work matter for how we think about urban sociology?

They explain that joblessness matters because it

decreases the pool of marriageable men.

It can increase crime and it can further concentrate poverty.

It can also increase things like teenage pregnancy. Um and welfare dependency.

It also reduces the number of available role models.

So if people are not able to work,

then that means that there aren't role models who have

jobs for other youth to see in the neighborhood.

And it can also drain community institutions

because people begin relying on those institutions

because they do not have jobs that they can rely on for support.

And this article delves into the past literature,

and the author makes this point that past literature hasn't

really thought about the spatial dimensions of urban joblessness.

So it's just sort of been stated that there is a lot of unemployment in urban areas,

but it hasn't been connected to experiences of segregation.

And so the author says that space matters because it

can amplify or moderate the negative effects of unemployment.

So thinking about the double disadvantage someone would

experience if they're they don't have a job

and if they're living in a segregated environment

where other people around them don't have jobs.

And so

the article leads to some important findings.

The jobless black men occupy and uniquely disadvantaged ecological niche.

Um they're much more segregated and much more isolated from people who are

employed and they experience greater employment clause if they do land a job,

and this relates to commute times, getting to work,

having to navigate other people who don't have work.

Um and because finding a job can be so

hard and because they experience so much isolation,

this can foster more illicit activities and

other criminal activity in the informal economy?

And so a key quote from here

is that the distinctively disadvantaged ecological position of

jobless black men is primarily attributable to group

differences and patterns of racial residential segregation,

racial residential segregation,

condemns jobless black men to a residential

environment in which widespread joblessness is the norm

and opportunities um to interact with employed men are very limited.

So this article is clearly connecting segregation to joblessness

and showing how it creates even more disadvantage.

So, those are all the articles that we had for today,

and I'm just going to pulls the questions,

I'm going to pull the ones that I discussed at the beginning and

then link that to some of the questions for the other articles?

So, there are a lot of different things you can think about for today's reading,

you might think about how urban violence becomes

commonplace for young people who grow up poor.

How is it that the informal economy seems to be so enticing?

Do you know people who you grew up with, who found the informal economy to be enticing

and then how can we understand urban

violence from a structural and historical perspective?

So this is really what the author is pushing us to think about,

and then what are the different types of experiences

that you have in jobs during high school?

How do these experiences matter for jobs later in life?

And what do you think are the outcomes for the youth now?

So this is probably the oldest study from this week.

So where do you think these people are now, who had these work experiences?

And how do you think work expectations may shape

adolescents and push people into the informal economy?

And then how work expectations changed over time as high

school work experience still as valuable as it once was?

What's your perspective on that?

And then what are the connections between joblessness and segregation?

How does isolation shape one's job prospects?

Why is joblessness so concentrated in urban areas,

and why is it affecting black men so greatly?

Do you still feel like those impacts are just as strong today?

And then looking forward?

How do you think work and expectations and

opportunities are shifting for youth for adulthood?

How is this all changing? So those are the questions for today.

And as always,

I look forward to your discussion posts and your responses to your classmates post?

Week 4: Unemployment and the Informal Economy

Chapters

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