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Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) employees constitute one of the largest, but least studied, minority groups in the workforce. This article examines what we know, and what we need to know, about the career and workplace experiences of this understudied population. The construct of sexual identity is defined, followed by a review of the research on sexual orientation in the workplace. Then an analysis of the differences between LGB employees and other stigmatized groups is presented. Three unique challenges facing LGB employees are identified, and conceptual models are developed that explain underlying processes. Finally, career theories are critically analyzed, and an identity-based longitudinal theory of LGB careers is presented.

As media texts, advertisements use representation practices to construct ideological meanings. This study traced the representation of the worker in advertisements with the help of content and thematic analysis. The study aimed to reveal the representation of the worker in the advertisements and to make the representations of the worker built through advertisements visible. The study was limited to ads that received an Effie Award in Turkey in 2020 and 2021. In the 2020 Effie Awards, 73 awards were given in 41 categories and in the 2021 Effie Awards, 68 awards were given in 42 categories. Content analysis was applied to 24 advertisements in 2020 and 31 advertisements in 2021. The quantitative data helped to determine the themes in the thematic analysis. Thematic analysis was carried out by regarding the worker as the (in)visible, the (un)voiced, and the bypassed. This study, which reveals that the worker is represented in advertisements through being invisible, unvoiced, and bypassed, claims that the labor of the worker in the production process is ignored through representation practices. In this context, it can be said that the worker is erased and omitted in TV ads on a symbolic level.

Which is the main characteristic of the French Mediterranean Agriculture (FMA)? The recognition of the multifunctionality of agriculture, supported by the institutions of the territorial development? Or the development of social dumping considered as a necessity by many institutions of the sector? To answer this question the analysis is based on three main sources of data: agricultural statistics, monographs and administrative reports. The results show that the structural diversity is still important in the FMA. A significant proportion of the farms have based their economic strategy on making the most of the multifunctionality of agriculture. Some have built real success stories. But this development path cannot guarantee the viability of a large range of holdings: the number of farm holdings in FMA has decreased by 27% since 2000 and 57% since 1988. Due to the specificities of the Mediterranean productions, the cost of labour is still considered as a major adjustment variable to secure farm income in the region. Many situations are reported where the situation of casual labour is concerning, in particular for migrant workers. However, the working conditions of temporary migrant workers remain invisible and the image of the multifunctional agriculture is put forward as a marketing asset by all types of actors. This image is misleading. It makes invisible, issues that are essential for the future. Thus, it generates knowledge gaps and leads to the depoliticization of debates on the development models of agriculture in masking the contradictions and the conflicts of interest that they generate.

Purpose – This chapter illustrates how an economic sociology of work exposes the deeply embedded nature of the informal economy and the social and political lives of its growing mass of unprotected workers under globalization. In particular, the premises of economic sociology offer a comprehensive definition of the informal economy that I term, “relational.” In contrast to definitions based on modernization and neoliberal assumptions of isolated economies, relational definitions of the informal economy expose the structures, networks, and political institutions that intertwine informal workers with the formal economy, society, and the state. Operationalizing the relational definition in labor surveys ensures the inclusion of previously invisible informal workers, especially those who operate at the intersection of the informal and formal economy. As well, it ensures the collection of data on the precise ways in which informal workers are socially and politically embedded, including their collective action efforts, the meaning they attach to their labor, and the social networks that determine their life chances.

Methodology – To illustrate this point, I apply a relational definition of informal labor to the case of India, using the National Sample Survey on Employment and Unemployment, as well as findings from interviews with organized informal workers.

Findings – By doing so, I provide an internationally comparative measure of India's informal workforce, illustrate informal workers’ social conditions relative to those of formal workers, highlight the expansion of the informal workforce since the government enacted liberalization reforms, and expose the unique political action strategies Indian informal workers are launching against the state.

Implications/Originality – These findings help us understand Indian informal workers in an internationally comparative context, yielding empirical insights on their social conditions and political organizations for the first time. As well, they call for an important refinement to existing definitions of the informal economy that to date have relied only on Latin American and African experiences.

It could be argued that in Argentina, workers’ voice has never been silenced. In a legislative system protecting workers and politically and legally empowering trade unions, these organisations have historically represented workers. Voice however has never been limited to institutionalised and organisational forms. It has often exploded in informal ways out of workers’ experiences of the precariousness of their labour processes and of the contradictions generated between this and formal voice and representation. But it has also emerged in novel forms, through the occupation of factories, roads and public places, in moments of deep economic crisis or among groups of informally employed workers.

The case of Argentina certainly calls for a broader understanding of voice tied to the idea of voice as a socially and politically mediated process, through which formal and informal channels of voice can be alternatively created, destroyed and recreated.

The paper attempts to trace these multiple forms of voice in the recent social history of Argentina using ethnographic research conducted by the author.

This chapter offers a broad view of ways organizations create and sustain social class distinction in the workplace and how these outcomes bolster broader perspectives about socioeconomic status and social class. One’s social class generally refers to earnings, education, or occupational status. In more complex terms, power dynamics create a dichotomy between owners of production forces and workers they employ; a social class structure of haves versus have-nots which organizes human relations. Chapter 9 draws from multiple research traditions to examine the wage labor system, combined with trends, myths and fallacies about social class, social identity intersectionalities, and specifically how social class is performed in organizations.

No matter how much people and their societies prefer to think of themselves as unrestricted and egalitarian, it seems that social class – perhaps more rigidly than any other social identity dimension – offers a ready reminder that social spaces and experiences at work, home, and elsewhere are clearly marked by social class. Key concepts explored include classism, class-free society illusions, and blue- and other color collar metaphors which connote power and privilege. To interrogate social identity research on social class in organizations, explored are subthemes of: socioeconomic status (SES) and the wage labor system in organizations; trends, myths, and fallacies about social class in the United States; intersectionalities of social class identity with age, ethnicity, gender, and physical/psychological ability; and “doing social class” at work.

Over 3 million intermittently employed and socially disadvantaged workers receive low wages and limited benefits in diverse long-term care settings and employment arrangements as they try to become a positively valued unified occupation: “direct care workers.” Before this occurs, these workers must overcome negative definitions imposed by three powerful institutions: professional guilds, employers, and states. Care workers’ legitimacy is challenged as nursing labels them “unlicensed, assistive personnel,” defining them in terms of their task relationship to nurses rather than their social relationship to clients. Care workers’ identity is obscured as corporate rationalization nullifies their unique contributions with task unbundling, part-time work, short staffing, and turnover undermining bonding with colleagues and clients. State regulation impedes care workers’ integration, segmenting similar workers under different regulatory regimes, defining workers negatively rather than by their educational attainments and competencies. Overcoming this triple negation will require not just cultural change, but also real structural changes, and can occur only through concerted actions involving coalitions. Labor market intermediaries, public authorities, labor unions, workforce investment boards, philanthropic organizations, and government interagency groups are among those supporting direct care workers’ advancement by strategically coordinating licensing, purchasing, and developing the workforce. Recent federal policy changes and health reform legislation have enhanced recognition of this occupation and are providing new resources for its development.

This chapter discusses work-life interface (WLI) issues for migrant-citizen older British women of South Asian heritage living in the UK. It shows how WLI issues are inevitably entangled with the active ageing agenda for the older workforce and that we need further attention from scholars exploring these issues across life courses to appreciate and understand how ageing across locations, times and contexts unveils unique aspects of WLI. The chapter discussion rethinks some of the existing constructs of WLI and introduces new ones to its periphery, including people’s social identities and the spatio-temporal nature of those identities. Such a rethinking process is supported by critical empirical evidence on the lived experiences of a group of older ethnic minority British women living in Greater Manchester, UK, who juggled between work and caring throughout their lives, and abruptly quit paid work due to unmanageable overlapping demands. The evidence indicates how migrant women from the global south struggle to navigate UK WLI norms/culture and their meanings, especially when irreconcilable differences exist between the community/family norms and the social norms in the host country. The chapter findings have implications for the future of an inclusive labor market as it recommends early planning, provisioning and addressing ageing migrants’ WLI issues to draw sustainable/inclusive future labor market policies.