Inequalities Beyond the Average Man: The Political Economy of Identity-Based Stratification Mechanisms in Markets and Policy

Abstract

This dissertation develops a political economy of identity and identity-based stratification mechanisms. It argues that stratification mechanisms produce and reproduce structural relationships between identities and inequalities. Primarily applied to the study of migrants’ integration, it develops novel explanations of some of the ways in which identity-based stratification mechanisms operate in markets and policy. Chapter 2 uses search and matching theory as an analytical tool to understand migrants' search processes, and the interaction between migrant and destination societies as matching events. It develops a social identity-based matching approach to migrants’ integration into established social systems to explain frictions in integration endogenously. Chapter 3 introduces social stratification as a structural approach to exclusion in labor markets. Investigating whether stratification is an inescapable trap for migrant groups, it argues that the failure of migrants’ integration is a collective action problem associated with how societies organize labor markets in a club-like way with sharply different sets of opportunities for different people. Chapter 4 develops the concept of ‘algorithmic stratification’ to illustrate identity-based structural exclusion mechanisms. It examines the ways in which the use of automated decision-making systems and algorithms in general contribute to the social reproduction of a stratified society. Chapter 5 closes the dissertation with the conclusion that just as who people are and how they are seen, labeled, and treated matters, so do identity and inequalities beyond the average man.