UC Berkeley

Drawing from a unique dataset based on 146 in-depth, semistructured interviews with a nonrandom sample of ethnoracially and class diverse workers at one large public sector employer, the authors link job contacts’ patterns of assistance to three distinct cultural logics of job-matching assistance—defensive individualism, particularism, and matchmaking—which differed along three dimensions: (a) the primary criteria upon which help was contingent, (b) the perceived risk faced, and (c) the screening practices contacts used. These findings contribute to a small but growing body of research highlighting the cultural logics that inform where, how much, and to whom job information and influence flows.