Fattigdom, ulighed og social mobilitet

• Jessica Bruder (2017). Nomadland. (Bog)
  From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that Social Security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming a growing community of nomads: migrant laborers who call themselves “workampers.” In a second-hand van she names “Halen,” Jessica Bruder hits the road to get to know her subjects more intimately.
• Chloe Zhao (2020). Nomadland. (Film)
  Chloe Zhaos Oscarvindende filmatisering af Jessica Bruders roman - med Frances McDormand i hovedrollen.
• Matthew Desmond (2023). Poverty, by America. (Bog)
  This book by the sociologist and author Matthew Desmond examines the persistence of want in the wealthy United States, finding that keeping some citizens poor serves the interests of many.
• Sarah Smarsh (2020): HEARTLAND: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth. (Bog)
  Smarsh was born a fifth-generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, the child of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. In HEARTLAND, she introduces readers to a compelling cast of characters from her own family—grandmothers who act as second mothers, farmers who work themselves to the bone, builders who can’t afford their own homes, children who move from school to school. Smarsh maps their lives against the destruction of the working class wrought by public policy: the demise of the family farm, the dismantling of public health care, the defunding of public schools, wages so stagnant that full-time laborers could no longer pay the bills. Readers will learn what Smarsh did: Working hard in this country probably won’t get you ahead after all. The complex, often brilliant people of Smarsh’s story defy stereotypes amid a culture that embraces the term “white trash,” suggesting that some lives are of lesser value and even dispensable. Part memoir, part social analysis, part cultural commentary, HEARTLAND is an uncompromising look at class, identity and the perils of economic hardship in a wealthy nation.
• Robert D. Putnam (2015). Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. (Bog)
  Central to the very idea of America is the principle that we are a nation of opportunity. But over the last quarter century we have seen a disturbing “opportunity gap” emerge. We Americans have always believed that those who have talent and try hard will succeed, but this central tenet of the American Dream seems no longer true or at the least, much less true than it was. In Our Kids, Robert Putnam offers a personal and authoritative look at this new American crisis, beginning with the example of his high school class of 1959 in Port Clinton, Ohio. The vast majority of those students went on to lives better than those of their parents. But their children and grandchildren have faced diminishing prospects. Putnam tells the tale of lessening opportunity through poignant life stories of rich, middle class, and poor kids from cities and suburbs across the country, brilliantly blended with the latest social-science research.