Finding Work in the Age of LGBTQ + Equalities

Labor Market Experiences of Queer and Trans Workers in Deindustrializing Cities

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4976281
AutoresSuzanne Mill (0000-0003-1845-5954, McMaster University), N Oswin (0000-0001-5429-8592, University of Toronto)
Ano2024
Volume100
Fascículo2
Páginas170-190
Data de publicação2024-03-03
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEconomic Geography (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0013-0095 • E-ISSN: 1944-8287
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00130095.2023.2290479
OpenAlexW4390498649
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas55

Despite legal protections and growing acceptance in many industrialized countries, LGBTQ + workers continue to face considerable employment disadvantage. We explain this contradiction by detailing labor market processes that limit employment prospects for LGBTQ + workers in Sudbury and Windsor (both small cities with industrial histories). Drawing on 50 semistructured interviews and 662 community survey responses from LGBTQ + workers, we show how LGBTQ + employment opportunities are constrained by a constellation of multiscalar factors. These include the absence of good work opportunities outside of blue-collar work in deindustrializing labor markets, associated persistent cisnormativity and heteronormativity, and inconsistent protection from discrimination and social acceptance at work. As a result, respondents self-selected out of blue-collar workplaces, avoided and left jobs when they experienced or anticipated discrimination, and chose to remain in jobs with supportive employers rather than find a new job in a potentially homophobic or transphobic labor market. This article extends current understandings of labor markets economic geography by connecting production histories to persistent cisnormativity and heteronormitivity, and by showing how the search for emotional safety in cities with inconsistent social acceptance perpetuates economic disadvantage for queer and trans workers

Business · Demographic economics · Disadvantage · Economics · Heteronormativity · Labor relations · Labour economics · Lesbian · Political science · Precarious work · Queer · Secondary labor market · Sociology · Split labor market theory · Work (physics) · Gender Studies · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy