Andrea Voyer
Biographic Data
| ID | 86393 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrea Voyer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrea |
| FAMILY NAME | Voyer |
| SIGNATURE | VOYER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stockholm University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0338-3273 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 63 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Should Generative AI be Used in Reflexive Qualitative Research
Debates about generative artificial intelligence (AI) have produced claims that such tools should be excluded from qualitative, and especially reflexive, research. This note challenges that conclusion. We argue that generative AI is not a single method but a heterogeneous set of transformer-based models, many open and configurable for scholarly use. Situating large language models within a longer lineage of computational text analysis, we suggest…
Balancing act
Modern children start using digital media at an early age. As a result, today’s parents encounter new challenges that parents of previous generations didn’t have to deal with. Prior research considers how parents adapt their parenting strategies to the realities of the digital age, seeking to minimize harm and maximize the value of children’s digital experiences. However, sometimes parents aren’t managing these challenges alone. In countries like…
Cooling Out or Branching Out? Accounting for the Aspirations‐Attainment Paradox Among Immigrant Youth in Sweden
In Sweden, as in many countries, immigrant youth tend to exhibit higher educational aspirations than native‐born youth, yet their attainment often falls short of their greater ambitions. This study, resulting from a research project focused on educational transitions in two Swedish municipalities, explores two mechanisms that help explain the aspirations‐attainment paradox among immigrant youth. The first mechanism, “cooling out,” involves a lowe…
Qualitative research with LLM chatbots
In this article, we advocate for qualitative research using LLM chatbots. While qualitative research may seem incompatible with generative artificial intelligence, we argue that these tools are fundamentally qualitative as they are built from text and are sensitive to social meaning. However, research using LLM chatbots should adhere to standards for reflexivity, in which researchers critically reflect on and accept accountability for the complex…
Recognition Gaps and Covid Inequality
In this article, we examine recognition gaps exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. We apply Lamont's cultural processes of inequality framework to the critical case of COVID inequality during the first wave of the pandemic in Sweden - a period in which COVID-19 cases were concentrated among immigrants. We identify recognition gaps associated with five key cultural processes of inequality. Counter to the dominant narrative of Sweden as an open and …
From incorporation to emplacement in the cultural sociology of immigration
Cultural sociology can be useful for uncovering factors facilitating and hindering immigrant incorporation. The process of incorporation blends different logics and pressures, where the work of incorporation is divided between immigrants who pursue incorporation, and social groups (from nations, to communities, and from classrooms to corporations) that facilitate, hinder, and shape trajectories of inclusion. Cultural sociology has much to contrib…
Do your part
This mixed-methods study examines how political leaders mobilize collective intentionality during the COVID-19 pandemic in nine US States, and how collective intentionality differs across republican and democratic administrations. The results of our computational and qualitative analyses show that i) political leaders establish collective intentionality by emphasizing unity, vulnerability, action, and community boundaries; ii) political leaders' …
Symbols of class
Social scientists of class and inequality have documented the rise of omnivorousness, informality, ordinariness, and emphasis on meritocracy. This apparent decline in class closure contrasts sharply with rising inequality and declining economic mobility. How are these competing developments reflected in everyday class distinction-making? In this article, we answer this question by applying Goffman's work on the symbols of class status to the anal…
From Strange to Normal
This article presents a computational approach to examining immigrant incorporation through shifts in the social 'mainstream.' Analyzing a historical corpus of American etiquette books, texts from 1922-2017 describing social norms, we identify mainstream shifts related to long-standing groups which once were and may currently still be seen as immigrant outsiders in the United States: Catholic, Chinese, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Mexican, and Muslim …
Importing American racial reasoning to social science research in Sweden
How does one research racial categorizations and exclusion while remaining sensitive to context? How does one engage the social reality of racial categorizations and the history of racialized exclusions without falling into the trap of race essentialism? These concerns prompt debate about, and also resistance to, examining race in Swedish social science. In this article, Voyer and Lund offer American racial reasoning as one possible approach to r…
Hope and a horizon of solidarity - An interview with Jeffrey C. Alexander
In this interview, Jeffrey C. Alexander describes the development of cultural sociology, the importance of collaborative work, and the inspiration he takes from his political action, and from the art and humanities. The interview focuses primarily on civil sphere theory (CST), and Alexander's goal in moving towards Durkheimian and away from Parsonian conceptions of solidarity. Alexander addresses common misunderstandings and critiques of CST, des…
Wright's Lost Souls
If the students don’t come, or if they don’t finish, we don’t get the money.’ Principals, immigration, and the organisational logic of school choice in Sweden
School choice is associated with increased educational inequality and across-school segregation. This article documents the organisational practices and logics affecting school segregation and inequality. Through an institutional ethnographic study of principals’ responses to school choice within the context of immigration in Malmö, Sweden, I find that principals work to align their schools with generalised conceptions of a ‘good’ school – a ‘Swe…
Somalis in the Twin Cities and Columbus
Of lads and ear'oles
This article draws on structural symbolic interactionism (SSI) to extend Willis's insights into social reproduction and social mobility. Willis contrasts the lads with the ear'oles - working-class youth who conform to the requirements and ideology of school. If, as Willis argues, working-class youth encounter conflict between the culture of school and the culture of labour, then the ear'oles' pro-school behaviours may be interpreted as rebellious…
Thinking Through Everyday Inequality
While contemporary American society is highly segregated and increasingly unequal, there are settings in which typical social divisions do not apply-in principle (if not in practice) neither limiting one's ability to participate nor shaping one's power relative to others. This essay draws on current research on the everyday dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion among the parents of a New York City Parent-Teacher Association to highlight ever…
Between theory and social reality
Difficulties distinguishing the ethnographic object and the ethnographer's analysis can pose a challenge to the conduct and dissemination of ethnographic work. The close distance between ethnographic observation and the ethnographer's interpretation elides the boundary between considerations of theory and method. In his book, Interpretation and Social Knowledge, Reed describes interpretivism as an epistemological approach aimed at harnessing the …
Meanings, motives and action
Reed's Interpretation and Social Knowledge is a valuable resource for ethnographers whose work is characterized by explicit engagement with the sense-making environments that produce social reality. In this essay, I highlight interpretivism's strengths as a 'theory of method', and then discuss its limitations. Namely, I take issue with the central roles that the social actor and motivated action play in Interpretation and Social Knowledge. I draw…
Consensus on Culture in American Sociology
How Chinese Are You? Adopted Chinese Youth and Their Families Negotiate Identity and Culture
Elusive Jannah
S omali I mmigrants to the U nited S tates
Immigration statistics suggest that by 2012 approximately 120,751 Somalis resided in the United States. Somalis have settled in increasing numbers since the late 1980s. Despite the relatively small size of the Somali American population, Somali immigrants have drawn attention as a result of their unique settlement practices, Somalis' position as religious and racial minorities in the United States, the ongoing involvement of Somali Americans in t…
Multiculturalism as the Normative Context of Immigrant Reception
Drawing on data gathered through ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the process of normative incorporation as it occurs through the establishment of group recognition and representation among a new immigrant group settling in a new immigrant destination. I argue that Somali immigrant incorporation in the small, white American, new destination city of Lewiston, Maine was characterised by (1) the recognition of and partnership with Somali organisati…
Strangers and Neighbors
In Strangers and Neighbors, Andrea M. Voyer shares five years of observations in the city of Lewiston. She shows how long-time city residents and immigrant newcomers worked to develop an understanding of the inclusive and caring community in which they could all take part. Yet the sense of community developed in Lewiston was built on the appreciation of diversity in the abstract rather than by fostering close and caring relationships across the b…
Notes on a cultural sociology of immigrant incorporation
Disciplined to diversity
This study shows that contemporary multiculturalism is a cultural referent used in the construction of modern and socially-acceptable selves. By analysing the practices of diversity training, I consider one of the ways in which multiculturalism moves from abstract philosophical idea and fodder for policy formation to adoption as a cultural and moral framework that individuals use in establishing their identities, discerning meaning and engaging o…
Symbols of class
Social scientists of class and inequality have documented the rise of omnivorousness, informality, ordinariness, and emphasis on meritocracy. This apparent decline in class closure contrasts sharply with rising inequality and declining economic mobility. How are these competing developments reflected in everyday class distinction-making? In this article, we answer this question by applying Goffman's work on the symbols of class status to the anal…
From Strange to Normal
This article presents a computational approach to examining immigrant incorporation through shifts in the social 'mainstream.' Analyzing a historical corpus of American etiquette books, texts from 1922-2017 describing social norms, we identify mainstream shifts related to long-standing groups which once were and may currently still be seen as immigrant outsiders in the United States: Catholic, Chinese, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Mexican, and Muslim …
Notes on a cultural sociology of immigrant incorporation
Do your part
This mixed-methods study examines how political leaders mobilize collective intentionality during the COVID-19 pandemic in nine US States, and how collective intentionality differs across republican and democratic administrations. The results of our computational and qualitative analyses show that i) political leaders establish collective intentionality by emphasizing unity, vulnerability, action, and community boundaries; ii) political leaders' …
Between theory and social reality
Difficulties distinguishing the ethnographic object and the ethnographer's analysis can pose a challenge to the conduct and dissemination of ethnographic work. The close distance between ethnographic observation and the ethnographer's interpretation elides the boundary between considerations of theory and method. In his book, Interpretation and Social Knowledge, Reed describes interpretivism as an epistemological approach aimed at harnessing the …
Hope and a horizon of solidarity - An interview with Jeffrey C. Alexander
In this interview, Jeffrey C. Alexander describes the development of cultural sociology, the importance of collaborative work, and the inspiration he takes from his political action, and from the art and humanities. The interview focuses primarily on civil sphere theory (CST), and Alexander's goal in moving towards Durkheimian and away from Parsonian conceptions of solidarity. Alexander addresses common misunderstandings and critiques of CST, des…
If the students don’t come, or if they don’t finish, we don’t get the money.’ Principals, immigration, and the organisational logic of school choice in Sweden
School choice is associated with increased educational inequality and across-school segregation. This article documents the organisational practices and logics affecting school segregation and inequality. Through an institutional ethnographic study of principals’ responses to school choice within the context of immigration in Malmö, Sweden, I find that principals work to align their schools with generalised conceptions of a ‘good’ school – a ‘Swe…
Meanings, motives and action
Reed's Interpretation and Social Knowledge is a valuable resource for ethnographers whose work is characterized by explicit engagement with the sense-making environments that produce social reality. In this essay, I highlight interpretivism's strengths as a 'theory of method', and then discuss its limitations. Namely, I take issue with the central roles that the social actor and motivated action play in Interpretation and Social Knowledge. I draw…
Recognition Gaps and Covid Inequality
In this article, we examine recognition gaps exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. We apply Lamont's cultural processes of inequality framework to the critical case of COVID inequality during the first wave of the pandemic in Sweden - a period in which COVID-19 cases were concentrated among immigrants. We identify recognition gaps associated with five key cultural processes of inequality. Counter to the dominant narrative of Sweden as an open and …
Importing American racial reasoning to social science research in Sweden
How does one research racial categorizations and exclusion while remaining sensitive to context? How does one engage the social reality of racial categorizations and the history of racialized exclusions without falling into the trap of race essentialism? These concerns prompt debate about, and also resistance to, examining race in Swedish social science. In this article, Voyer and Lund offer American racial reasoning as one possible approach to r…
Somalis in the Twin Cities and Columbus
Of lads and ear'oles
This article draws on structural symbolic interactionism (SSI) to extend Willis's insights into social reproduction and social mobility. Willis contrasts the lads with the ear'oles - working-class youth who conform to the requirements and ideology of school. If, as Willis argues, working-class youth encounter conflict between the culture of school and the culture of labour, then the ear'oles' pro-school behaviours may be interpreted as rebellious…
Qualitative research with LLM chatbots
In this article, we advocate for qualitative research using LLM chatbots. While qualitative research may seem incompatible with generative artificial intelligence, we argue that these tools are fundamentally qualitative as they are built from text and are sensitive to social meaning. However, research using LLM chatbots should adhere to standards for reflexivity, in which researchers critically reflect on and accept accountability for the complex…
Disciplined to diversity
This study shows that contemporary multiculturalism is a cultural referent used in the construction of modern and socially-acceptable selves. By analysing the practices of diversity training, I consider one of the ways in which multiculturalism moves from abstract philosophical idea and fodder for policy formation to adoption as a cultural and moral framework that individuals use in establishing their identities, discerning meaning and engaging o…
Strangers and Neighbors
In Strangers and Neighbors, Andrea M. Voyer shares five years of observations in the city of Lewiston. She shows how long-time city residents and immigrant newcomers worked to develop an understanding of the inclusive and caring community in which they could all take part. Yet the sense of community developed in Lewiston was built on the appreciation of diversity in the abstract rather than by fostering close and caring relationships across the b…
Notes on a cultural sociology of immigrant incorporation
S omali I mmigrants to the U nited S tates
Immigration statistics suggest that by 2012 approximately 120,751 Somalis resided in the United States. Somalis have settled in increasing numbers since the late 1980s. Despite the relatively small size of the Somali American population, Somali immigrants have drawn attention as a result of their unique settlement practices, Somalis' position as religious and racial minorities in the United States, the ongoing involvement of Somali Americans in t…
Multiculturalism as the Normative Context of Immigrant Reception
Drawing on data gathered through ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the process of normative incorporation as it occurs through the establishment of group recognition and representation among a new immigrant group settling in a new immigrant destination. I argue that Somali immigrant incorporation in the small, white American, new destination city of Lewiston, Maine was characterised by (1) the recognition of and partnership with Somali organisati…
Consensus on Culture in American Sociology
How Chinese Are You? Adopted Chinese Youth and Their Families Negotiate Identity and Culture
Elusive Jannah
Thinking Through Everyday Inequality
While contemporary American society is highly segregated and increasingly unequal, there are settings in which typical social divisions do not apply-in principle (if not in practice) neither limiting one's ability to participate nor shaping one's power relative to others. This essay draws on current research on the everyday dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion among the parents of a New York City Parent-Teacher Association to highlight ever…
Between theory and social reality
Difficulties distinguishing the ethnographic object and the ethnographer's analysis can pose a challenge to the conduct and dissemination of ethnographic work. The close distance between ethnographic observation and the ethnographer's interpretation elides the boundary between considerations of theory and method. In his book, Interpretation and Social Knowledge, Reed describes interpretivism as an epistemological approach aimed at harnessing the …
Meanings, motives and action
Reed's Interpretation and Social Knowledge is a valuable resource for ethnographers whose work is characterized by explicit engagement with the sense-making environments that produce social reality. In this essay, I highlight interpretivism's strengths as a 'theory of method', and then discuss its limitations. Namely, I take issue with the central roles that the social actor and motivated action play in Interpretation and Social Knowledge. I draw…
If the students don’t come, or if they don’t finish, we don’t get the money.’ Principals, immigration, and the organisational logic of school choice in Sweden
School choice is associated with increased educational inequality and across-school segregation. This article documents the organisational practices and logics affecting school segregation and inequality. Through an institutional ethnographic study of principals’ responses to school choice within the context of immigration in Malmö, Sweden, I find that principals work to align their schools with generalised conceptions of a ‘good’ school – a ‘Swe…
Somalis in the Twin Cities and Columbus
Of lads and ear'oles
This article draws on structural symbolic interactionism (SSI) to extend Willis's insights into social reproduction and social mobility. Willis contrasts the lads with the ear'oles - working-class youth who conform to the requirements and ideology of school. If, as Willis argues, working-class youth encounter conflict between the culture of school and the culture of labour, then the ear'oles' pro-school behaviours may be interpreted as rebellious…
Wright's Lost Souls
Importing American racial reasoning to social science research in Sweden
How does one research racial categorizations and exclusion while remaining sensitive to context? How does one engage the social reality of racial categorizations and the history of racialized exclusions without falling into the trap of race essentialism? These concerns prompt debate about, and also resistance to, examining race in Swedish social science. In this article, Voyer and Lund offer American racial reasoning as one possible approach to r…
Hope and a horizon of solidarity - An interview with Jeffrey C. Alexander
In this interview, Jeffrey C. Alexander describes the development of cultural sociology, the importance of collaborative work, and the inspiration he takes from his political action, and from the art and humanities. The interview focuses primarily on civil sphere theory (CST), and Alexander's goal in moving towards Durkheimian and away from Parsonian conceptions of solidarity. Alexander addresses common misunderstandings and critiques of CST, des…
Do your part
This mixed-methods study examines how political leaders mobilize collective intentionality during the COVID-19 pandemic in nine US States, and how collective intentionality differs across republican and democratic administrations. The results of our computational and qualitative analyses show that i) political leaders establish collective intentionality by emphasizing unity, vulnerability, action, and community boundaries; ii) political leaders' …
Symbols of class
Social scientists of class and inequality have documented the rise of omnivorousness, informality, ordinariness, and emphasis on meritocracy. This apparent decline in class closure contrasts sharply with rising inequality and declining economic mobility. How are these competing developments reflected in everyday class distinction-making? In this article, we answer this question by applying Goffman's work on the symbols of class status to the anal…
From Strange to Normal
This article presents a computational approach to examining immigrant incorporation through shifts in the social 'mainstream.' Analyzing a historical corpus of American etiquette books, texts from 1922-2017 describing social norms, we identify mainstream shifts related to long-standing groups which once were and may currently still be seen as immigrant outsiders in the United States: Catholic, Chinese, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Mexican, and Muslim …
From incorporation to emplacement in the cultural sociology of immigration
Cultural sociology can be useful for uncovering factors facilitating and hindering immigrant incorporation. The process of incorporation blends different logics and pressures, where the work of incorporation is divided between immigrants who pursue incorporation, and social groups (from nations, to communities, and from classrooms to corporations) that facilitate, hinder, and shape trajectories of inclusion. Cultural sociology has much to contrib…
Cooling Out or Branching Out? Accounting for the Aspirations‐Attainment Paradox Among Immigrant Youth in Sweden
In Sweden, as in many countries, immigrant youth tend to exhibit higher educational aspirations than native‐born youth, yet their attainment often falls short of their greater ambitions. This study, resulting from a research project focused on educational transitions in two Swedish municipalities, explores two mechanisms that help explain the aspirations‐attainment paradox among immigrant youth. The first mechanism, “cooling out,” involves a lowe…
Qualitative research with LLM chatbots
In this article, we advocate for qualitative research using LLM chatbots. While qualitative research may seem incompatible with generative artificial intelligence, we argue that these tools are fundamentally qualitative as they are built from text and are sensitive to social meaning. However, research using LLM chatbots should adhere to standards for reflexivity, in which researchers critically reflect on and accept accountability for the complex…
Recognition Gaps and Covid Inequality
In this article, we examine recognition gaps exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. We apply Lamont's cultural processes of inequality framework to the critical case of COVID inequality during the first wave of the pandemic in Sweden - a period in which COVID-19 cases were concentrated among immigrants. We identify recognition gaps associated with five key cultural processes of inequality. Counter to the dominant narrative of Sweden as an open and …
Should Generative AI be Used in Reflexive Qualitative Research
Debates about generative artificial intelligence (AI) have produced claims that such tools should be excluded from qualitative, and especially reflexive, research. This note challenges that conclusion. We argue that generative AI is not a single method but a heterogeneous set of transformer-based models, many open and configurable for scholarly use. Situating large language models within a longer lineage of computational text analysis, we suggest…
Sociology (21 works) · Political science (17 works) · Law (14 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Social science (11 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Immigration (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works)