Kim Voss

Kim Voss

Kim Voss

Professor
Office
476 Social Sciences Building
Phone
510-642-4756
Curriculum Vitae
Research Interests
Labor, social movements, inequality, higher education, political sociology, historical sociology

Kim Voss arrived at Berkeley in 1986 with a Ph.D. from Stanford. She studies social movements, labor, inequality, higher education, and comparative-historical sociology.

Her current research investigates the resonance of frames used in the immigrant rights movement, examines dilemmas currently facing the U.S. labor movement, analyzes the shifting terrain of U.S. higher education, and surveys precarity in the San Francisco Bay Area.In addition to publishing in academic journals in sociology, political science, and demography, she has written or edited six books: Rallying for Immigrant Rights (2011, with I. Bloemraad), Hard Work: Remaking the American Labour Movement (2006, with R. Fantasia), Rebuilding Labour: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement (2004, with R. Milkman), Des Synidcats Domestiques: Repression Patronale et Resistance Syndicale Aux Etas-Unis (2003, with R. Fantasia), Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (1996, with five Berkeley colleagues), and The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labour and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (1993).

Her newest publications are a 2022 article in Social Problems: "Persistent Inequalities in College Completion, 1980-2010" (with Michael Hout and Kristin George), two 2020 articles in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: “Movement or Moment? Lessons from the pro-immigrant movement in the United States and contemporary challenges,” (with I. Bloemraad) and “The Limits of Rights: Claims-making on behalf of immigrants” (with F. Silva and I. Bloemraad), and one 2020 book chapter, “Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me: Shifting Targets, Changing Repertoires, and Internal Democracy in the U.S. Labor Movement” (with Pablo Gaston), in James Jasper and Braydon King, Protesters and Their Targets, Temple University Press.

Representative Publications

Books

 

Selected Articles and Chapters

  • 2022. "Persistent Inequalities in College Completion,  1980-2010." with Michael Hout and Kristin George. Social Problems, forthcoming in print and available online: https://doi-org.libproxy.berkeley.edu/10.1093/socpro/spac014
  • 2020. “Movement or Moment? Lessons from the pro-immigrant movement in the United States and contemporary challenges,” with Irene Bloemraad. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46 (4):  683-704.
  • 2020. “The Limits of Rights: Claims-making on Behalf of Immigrants,” with Fabiana Silva and Irene Bloemraad. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46 (4): 791-819.
  • 2020. “Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me: Shifting Targets, Changing Repertoires, and Internal Democracy in the U.S. Labor Movement,”with Pablo Gaston.  In James Jasper and Braydon King, Protesters and Their Targets, Temple University Press.
  • 2016. "Rights, Economics, or Family? Frame Resonance, Political Ideology, and the Immigrant Rights Movement," with Irene Bloemraad and Fabiana Silva, Social Forces
  • 2015. “Same as it Ever Was? New Labor, the CIO Organizing Model, and the Future of American Unions,” Politics and Society,43: 453-457.
  • 2012. "The Local in the Global: Rethinking Social Movements in the New Millennium," with Michelle Williams,  Democratization, Vol. 19 (2), pp. 352-377.
  • 2011. "The Immigration Rallies of 2006:  What Were They, How Do We Understand Them, Where Do We Go?” with Irene Bloemraad and Taeku Lee.  In Voss and Bloemraad, Rallying for Immigrant Rights, University of California Press.
  • 2010. "Enduring Legacy? Charles Tilly and Durable Inequality,” American Sociologist 41 (November): 368-37.
  • 2010. "Democratic Dilemmas: Union Democracy and Union Renewal,” Transfer: European Review of Labor and Research, 16 (August): 369-382.
  • 2000 “Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Tactical Innovation and the Revitalization of the American Labor Movement,” With Rachel Sherman. American Journal of Sociology, 106 (September): 303-349.