RECENT PUBLICATIONS
“Handcrafted Careers” article in Social Problems
How does racial inequality get reproduced in today's world of work at the ground-level and through subtle and often indirect processes? Why do inequities between white workers and workers of color become more pronounced with time? This research tackles this question by examining the racialized career pathways of craft beer workers.
Recent Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
“White-Collar Local: Examining Group Boundary Making and Social Hierarchies in a Honolulu Government Workplace”
Social Process in Hawai’i, 2021
“Managing Portfolio Lives: Flexibility and Privilege Amongst Upscale Restaurant Workers in Los Angeles”
The unstable, even precarious labor conditions of many frontline service jobs in the United States should render them undesirable to upwardly mobile young workers. Yet how might these types of jobs complement, rather than infringe upon, the broader lifestyles of those hired to do them? Dr. Wilson answers this question by introducing the concept of “portfolio lives”: shifting and often unstable assemblages of work and non-work activities that many front-of-house workers negotiate.
Qualitative Sociology, 2019.
“Tip Work: Examining the Relational Dynamics of Tipping Beyond the Service Counter.”
How might the implications of working for tips go beyond the service counter? Dr. Wilson argues that tipping strains relations between subgroups of workers who, despite collectively producing service in the same establishment, are subject to unequal access to tip earnings. By exploring the broader scope of “tip work,” Dr. Wilson shows that the way tips are received and distributed in the workplace shapes relations among workers in ways that can exacerbate existing organizational and social hierarchies.
Symbolic Interaction, 2019.
“Stuck Behind Kitchen Doors? Assessing the Work Prospects of Second-Generation Latino Workers in a Los Angeles Restaurant.”
As the children of Latinx immigrants enter “bad” service and retail jobs alongside the first generation, how might they be faring differently? Dr. Wilson shows that while structural disadvantages initially funnel these workers into bottom-rung restaurant jobs, many are able to leverage their in-betweenness on a shopfloor divided into immigrant Latino and privileged white employee cohorts. Doing so has allowed some latter-generation workers access to new occupational mobility pathways virtually closed to the first generation.
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2017
“Matching Up: Producing Proximal Service in a Los Angeles Restaurant.”
Usually, service workers must carefully control their emotional and aesthetic displays towards customers who, in turn, need not reciprocate such acts. By contrast, Dr. Wilson introduces the concept of proximal service — performed relationships in which server and served engage in peer-like interactions in a commercial setting. Dr. Wilson shows how management structures this drama through hiring, training, and shopfloor policies, all of which encourage select workers to approach customers using informal, flexible, and peer-like performances. He predicts this branded experience of “service amongst equals” is on the rise in settings that aim to offer an “authentic” consumer experience.
Research in the Sociology of Work, 2016
“Bridging the Service Divide: Dual Labor Niches and Embedded Opportunities in Restaurant Work.”
Restaurants and other interactive service workplaces in the United States serve as labor “niches” for two very different kinds of workers doing different tasks in the same setting. But what keeps these workers apart—and unequal? And how might the presence of dual labor niches in the workplace be a source of unexpected advantage for some workers?
RSF: Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2017