Protecting Status or the Job: Race Criteria and Jurisdiction Regulation in an Occupational Community

• In Event: 3431 - Theorizing Race in Organizations

Abstract

Race and mobility scholars have studied the relationships nonwhites have with the labor market, with others in their occupational categories, and the responsibilities that have in the workplace but have not addressed how they formalize networks into organizations or how these spaces are used. To address this empirical gap, this study uses the case of a community-based occupational association of Latinx professionals in suburban Chicago. By describing how immigrant service providers formalize their network into a formal organization, I reveal how the group must wrestle with the demands of their occupational role and the politics of racial/ ethnic solidarity. I find that, instead of being a comprehensive site for intraethnic engagement, the Hispanic Alliance served as a regulator of the codes and behaviors associated with the legitimacy of occupational tasks within a workplace and within a formalized occupational community. This paper argues that race-based occupational associations serve to protect the status of nonwhite professionals and legitimize the role these occupy in their workplaces. This paper closes with addressing the validity of the findings and future research suggestions.

Author

• Melissa Victoria Abad, Stanford University