Kim Voss is Chair of the IGS Faculty Advisory Committee.
Kim Voss arrived at Berkeley in 1986 with a Ph.D. from Stanford. She studies social movements, labor, inequality, higher education, and comparative-historical sociology.
Her current research investigates the resonance of frames used in the immigrant rights movement, examines dilemmas currently facing the U.S. labor movement, analyzes the shifting terrain of U.S. higher education, and surveys precarity in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in academic journals in sociology, political science, and demography, she has written or edited six books: Rallying for Immigrant Rights (2011, with I. Bloemraad), Hard Work: Remaking the American Labour Movement (2006, with R. Fantasia), Rebuilding Labour: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement (2004, with R. Milkman), Des Synidcats Domestiques: Repression Patronale et Resistance Syndicale Aux Etas-Unis (2003, with R. Fantasia), Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (1996, with five Berkeley colleagues), and The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labour and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (1993).
Her newest publications are two articles forthcoming (2019) in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: “Movement or Moment? Lessons from the pro-immigrant movement in the United States and contemporary challenges,” (with I. Bloemraad) and “The Limits of Rights: Claims-making on behalf of immigrants” (with F. Silva and I. Bloemraad).