Department Seminar: Job mobility, stigma, and the “sticky” job penalty

People with criminal records often struggle to find work, which affects their labor market outcomes long after their actual sentence is served. However, in Denmark, where penalties such as community service and fines are much more common than incarceration, most individuals retain their jobs throughout their conviction and typically return to work the day after getting a guilty verdict. This research probes into whether these individuals navigate job mobility differently and the subsequent impact on their long-term careers. Using Danish registry data from 2011 to 2021, we leverage a 2011 law change concerning the conditional recording of criminal records for young people and employ a regression discontinuity design to compare observationally similar individuals who differ only whether they have sealed or open criminal records.

Preliminary findings suggest that individuals with open criminal records will be less likely to leave the job they hold at the time of getting a guilty verdict. These patterns provide evidence that stigma leads to “sticky jobs”. We also bring evidence that the stickiness of jobs for stigmatized individuals leads to long-term negative labor market consequences.

In her talk, Cserpes will situate this paper within the broader context of her nascent research project, which aims to explore the mechanisms of perceived and actual labor market barriers for people with a criminal record. The project is a collaboration with the Danish Police, integrating their dataon criminal record checks into population registers. Employing a community-based approach, theproject co-creates research questions with key stakeholders. It has the backing of nonprofits, has asigned research collaboration with the Police, and is set to collaborate with businesses, achieving full cross-sectoral research.

Tünde Cserpes is an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship in the Department of Management at the School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University. Cserpes holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is a former Kauffman Dissertation Fellow for her work on entrepreneurship. She researches how people align where they work with what they do outside work, primarily focusing on the workplace conditions startups create. This work has appeared among others in the Journal of Social History, Academia of Management Discoveries, and Social Networks.

All members of the department and research staff from across the faculty are invited to attend. Please navigate the calendar on the Department and Sociology's website to find upcoming Department Seminars.