Linked Lives in Unsettled Times: A Mixed-Methods Study of Racialized Familial Disruption in the Context of U.S. Social Instability

The proposed sequential mixed-methods study draws on recent social scientific research on structural gendered racism and life course inequality to examine how racialized agency structures the social organization of time in the context of the COVID-19 era. We apply theoretical insights regarding racialized agency (i.e., the capacity to of individuals and families to structure their time within racialized social systems) as we unpack whether and how Black, Latinx, and White Americans experience social instability as life course disruption. We propose to analyze newly-available nationally representative semistructured qualitative interview data and surveys from the American Voices Project (AVP). We expect to develop, clarify, and refine emergent conceptual models that can help describe commonalities and divergences across three domains: (a) current challenges, (b) recovery opportunities, and (c) future expectations. This will advance our understanding of the stratification of biographical time in the context of a dynamic gendered racialized social system and will inform the research design of a larger study we develop to contribute to the evidence base concerning the intergenerational reproduction of inequality among American families.