An extensive literature documents racial discrimination in housing, focusing on its prevalence and effect on non-White populations. This article studies how such discrimination operates, and the intermediaries who engage in it: landlords. A fundamental assumption of racial discrimination research is that gatekeepers such as landlords are confronted with a racially heterogeneous applicant pool. The reality of urban housing markets, however, is that historical patterns of residential segregation intersect with other structural barriers to drive selection into the applicant pool, such that landlords are more often selecting between same-race applicants. Using interviews and observations with 157 landlords in four cities, we ask: how do landlords construct their tenants’ race within racially segmented housing markets, and how does this factor into their screening processes? We find that landlords distinguish between tenants based on the degree to which their behavior conforms to insidious cultural narratives at the intersection of race, gender, and class. Landlords with large portfolios rely on screening algorithms, whereas mom-and-pop landlords make decisions based on informal mechanisms such as “gut feelings,” home visits, and the presentation of children. Landlords may put aside certain racial prejudices when they have the right financial incentives, but only when the tenant also defies stereotypes. In this way, landlords’ intersectional construction of race—even within a predominantly Black or Latino tenant pool—limits residential options for low-income, subsidized tenants of color, burdening their search process. These findings have implications for how we understand racial discrimination within racially homogenous social spheres. Examining landlords’ screening practices offers insight into the role housing plays in how racism continues to shape life outcomes—both explicitly through overt racial bias, and increasingly more covertly, through algorithmic automation and digital technologies.

Unemployment is one of the most often cited barriers to reentry, yet we know little about how understandings of work inform the job-search strategies of men and women with felon status. How and why do individuals remain committed to the legitimate labor market and continue their search for employment? We categorized interviews from 38 Milwaukee County residents into four narrative typologies that (1) reflected understandings of work and job market challenges and (2) mapped onto reported job-search strategies. Findings inform discussions about reentry and stigma that have yet to draw on narratives of commitment to the labor market.

The Housing Choice Voucher Program struggles to assist families in accessing lowpoverty neighborhoods. This paper explores a newly introduced incentive in the voucher program in Milwaukee County that could expand its potential to improve locational outcomes by providing security deposit assistance to households who move to a suburban jurisdiction. Using in-depth interviews we examine the different ways voucher users responded to the program and how it interacted with their life experiences and search strategies. Our interviews highlight the role of housing instability and discrimination, as well as the role of informal search assistance and the appeals voucher users make to persuade landlords to rent to them. Our study speaks to the limits of "nudge"-like policy incentives and emphasizes how choices about moving are influenced not only by incentives but also by a stratified housing market. We conclude with policy suggestions based on our findings that could make suburban searches more promising for voucher holders.

Women’s political engagements often look different from those of men, and they are also undertheorized and understudied. The author examines how participation in family-focused community organizing shapes women’s lives, self-perceptions, and relationships. Using 15 months of participant observations of organizing activities and 40 interviews with parent organizers the author calls motherleaders, the author demonstrates how family-focused community organizing shapes participants’ lives in ways that help them leave “shells” of fear, vulnerability, and despair within their often marginalized lives as women of color, recent immigrants, and low-income mothers. The personal narratives of motherleaders demonstrate how their collective action transcends publicly stated formal organizational goals and powerfully affects them in life-altering ways. It is important that scholars seriously consider the intersecting identities of collective action participants, the meanings participants construct of and through “politics,” and the power of collective action to transform the lives of marginalized groups.

This article examines how civil religion reworks state/citizen relations among the formerly incarcerated. Participant observation and interviews were collected at two sites: FORCE (Fighting to Overcome Records and Create Equality), a civic group of formerly incarcerated persons and former gang members, and Community Renewal Society, a larger, interfaith civic group that provided institutional backing for FORCE. Data collection occurred over 18 months, as the two groups utilized faith‐based community organizing to advance legislative reform (Illinois House Bill 5723/3061) expanding the sealing of criminal records. Findings suggest that faith‐based community organizing, together with formerly incarcerated persons’ use of “redemption scripts,” can facilitate empowering social integration. Whereas research on religion in the postincarceration experience has focused on rehabilitation and reentry programming, our findings suggest that civil religion can facilitate empowering social integration. Civil religion enables collective and political action by de‐privatizing personal narratives.