Katy Morris

Like to think it was part of an apology tour (it wasn't)

Unemployment now higher in UK than in Italy Latest data adds to concern that Britain is losing the labour market flexibility that has underpinned economic growth

Unemployment now higher in UK than in Italy ft.trib.al/7O7i1RM

Quelle surprise

Back when I worked in UK policy, I interviewed Sir Robin Wales for research DCMS commissioned on Olympic regeneration in East London. He was absolutely vile, to me for existing and to his secretary for scheduling the (mandatory) interview

An perfectly good and also now obsolete iPhone

Farewell old soldier
No longer compatible
With life in Sweden

(The campaign to bring back fingerprint ID starts now)

"Switzerland highly resilient to populism and polarization"

*cries bitterly in Swiss*

Is A River Alive? A conversation with Robert Macfarlane We are thrilled to welcome acclaimed author and professor Robert Macfarlane to the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, who will be talking at KTH on March 12 about his newest book “Is a River Ali...

Geographically niche but @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social is in Stockholm (KTH) next Thursday 12th March to talk about his latest book Is a River Alive?

Sign-up ⬇️

Bloody Awful in Different Ways by Andrev Walden review – darkly funny Swedish autofiction In this bleak, bestselling coming-of-age debut, the author evokes life with the seven dads he had in seven years

Bloody Awful in Different Ways by Andrev Walden (translated by Ian Giles).

Magnificent (and magnificently translated) autofiction

There's possible reverse causality, there's potential reverse causality, and then there's the fear that young people living with their parents will hurt their job prospects.

Better neighbors—not better neighborhood factors like job availability—are what help disadvantaged adults succeed in the labor market, from Stephen B. Billings, Mark Hoekstra, and Gabriel Pons Rotger www.nber.org/papers/w34872

Visualizing Belief in Merit and Privilege, 1930 to 2020: Rejoinder Jonathan J. B. Mijs In the years since its publication in this journal, the author’s visualization of belief in meritocracy has been met with constructive scholarly engagement. A key contribution, echoed in Wiesner and Sachweh’s (2026) comment, has been to stress the limitations of one-dimensional measures of inequality beliefs. In this rejoinder, the author acknowledges that people can and do believe in the importance of meritocratic and nonmeritocratic factors as jointly shaping who gets ahead in society. In fact, the author stresses the importance of treating the two beliefs as analytically distinct dimensions rather than as opposing poles of a single continuum. Revisiting Mijs (2018), the author offers a two-dimensional visualization of the perceived importance of merit (hard work) and privilege (family wealth), extended to trace changes in public beliefs between 1930 and 2020 across countries in the West. Jointly examining popular beliefs about the importance of merit and privilege brings into focus the predominant belief in merit, in all countries and time periods. The picture is one of remarkable stability in the public’s beliefs about inequality during a period of rapidly growing economic inequalities. Where views have shifted, they trend in the direction of a widening gap between belief in merit and privilege in most periods and cohorts.

A rejoinder to a Socius article that hasn't been published yet seems like sub-optimal sequencing

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Ski tracks at Stockholm University

SOFI also has weekly fika and when conditions are right, you can go for a cheeky lunchtime ski

@populationeu.bsky.social

😢

US farmers are rejecting multimillion-dollar datacenter bids for their land: ‘I’m not for sale’ Families are navigating the tough choice between unimaginable riches and the identity that comes with land

More on the AI backlash in the United States

Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology The Swedish Institute for Social research (SOFI) is part of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Stockholm University. The institute is an internationally leading research institute in the field of socia

Great 2-3 year postdoc opportunity in the Social Policy unit here at @sofi.su.se, Stockholm University

SOFI is an incredible research and work environment, could not recommend it more

Deadline for applications (including your own research plan): 13th April 2026

Occupational Licensing, Intergenerational Occupational Persistence and Social Mobility We study the relationship between occupational regulation and intergenerational occupational persistence. Using the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009–2024), we find that individuals are significa...

Why do so many doctors, accountants, and solicitors have parents who did the same profession?

In a new paper with Maria Koumenta (QMUL), we show that occupational regulation increases intergenerational occupational persistence in the UK, thereby reducing social mobility.

doi.org/10.1111/irel...

How rightwing rhetoric has risen sharply in the UK parliament – an exclusive visual analysis In the past five years, MPs’ attitudes in the House of Commons towards immigration have swung harder to the right than at almost any other time in the last century

This is a truly exceptional analysis of British parliamentary speeches on immigration by @theguardian.com showing we are living in a uniquely nativist era.

1. Take a look at this chart. That black line? Technically, it's the decline in the percentage of Americans who move each year—from about one in five to less than one in thirteen.

But it's more than that.

You're looking at the decline of the American dream.

Example for the two staged unsupervised machine learning algorithm using point data as input. Backlayer maps depict Hamburg. The map shows neighborhoods in different sizes and forms, sometimes following administrative borders (black lines) sometimes not. Three differently colored neighborhood types are displayed, each representing a different social group of residents.

xample for the two staged unsupervised machine learning algorithm using 500x500m grid cells as input. Backlayer maps depict Hamburg. The map shows large neighborhoods in different sizes and forms, sometimes following administrative borders (black lines) sometimes not. Three differently colored neighborhood types are displayed, each representing a different social group of residents.

Looking for a measure of #neighborhoods, micro or macro #segregation?

I've got something for you!

My newly published paper in Sociological Methods & Research presents a machine-learning-based algorithm to delineate neighborhoods with grid-cell or point data:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Fair to say the Swiss wealth tax is not doing much

Which is a humongous increase! Bearing in mind that Switzerland actually has wealth taxes.

Link to full report here: e4s.center/wp-content/u...

So much in this new report on Swiss wealth inequality from @mariusbrulhart.bsky.social et al, including:

🇨🇭 wealth inequality is high and rising. Top-1% share of taxable wealth increased from 36.6% in 2003 to 45.1% in 2022

Generation gap Gen Z Millennials Living situation At home with their parents at age 23 1 23% Rental accommodation 21% 39% Own their own home 5% 1 17% Not yet gained independence because they could not afford to move out 23% Were living with parents to save for a deposit 17% Did not want to leave the family home yet 12% Partners and family Had a romantic partner by age 23 54% Lived with their partner 17% 40%* 68%

Gen Z (this group born 2000-02) are hitting ‘growing up’ milestones later than Millennials (this set 1989-90) partly as they can’t afford to move out from their parents. (Data from two separate longitudinal studies)
www.thetimes.com/article/8ff2...

Really fun thread and piece at the end!

Ice rinks everywhere

Ice rinks everywhere

Deep(ly beautiful) freeze

FT charts showing a particular type of British exceptionalism

It's the economy (and minimum wage policy), stoopid

‘Is university still worth it?’ is the wrong question The graduate earnings premium isn’t really measuring what most people think

Boudon (1974): An individual cannot create a job just because he wants it

@jburnmurdoch.ft.com (2025): Worsening graduate fortunes, it turns out, are a particularly 🇬🇧 problem, and one that can be traced to the particularly 🇬🇧 ailments of weak productivity growth and poor economic performance

📢 In this Social Forces article, I introduce occupational elitism as a novel measure of social closure: the share of upper-class background workers within an occupation.

Its consequences for earnings stratification can be examined using a social closure theory lens.

🔓 doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...

Come work with me! Two postdoc positions open in @erc.europa.eu project PROTECT, examining how local change shapes public support for protectionist policies in areas like trade and finance. @stockholmuni.bsky.social
su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
#polisky #academicsky

Donald Trump’s AI push fuels revolt in Maga heartlands Republicans fear backlash against White House agenda could undermine support in this year’s midterm elections

“But across the US, citizens, clergy and elected officials in conservative communities are leading a grassroots rebellion against the rapid rollout of AI”. @joemillerjr.ft.com v interesting on the local politics of AI

Oh this is what it feels like to be a reactionary

Excited to share a new #OA study with @dariatisch.bsky.social and @schechtlm.bsky.social🎉We show that while most people prefer equal inheritance, wealthy individuals are more willing to support unequal transfers when they help preserve wealth across generations ➡️ academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...