My research is broadly concerned with precarity, solidarity, and the potential for transformational social change across a range of research sites. Below are summaries of each of my previous and ongoing research projects.

Press to End Nightmare: Exploring Cultures of Solidarity and Resignation in Retail Grocery Work

I investigate the lived experiences and perspectives of retail grocery workers amid growing inequality, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the rise of artificial intelligence technologies. Drawing on findings from an eight-month workplace ethnography of Whole Foods Market, an upscale retail chain grocery store owned by Amazon, and 50 in-depth interviews with current and former Whole Foods workers, my research reveals how customer-facing AI and worker-facing algorithmic management technologies function to exacerbate understaffing and curb worker organizing. This research was funded in part by the Labor Research and Action Network.

PUBLICATIONS

Mott, Katherine. Forthcoming. “Checked out: Coping and cashiering in retail grocery work.” Research in the Sociology of Work, Vol. 38. Binkley, UK: Emerald Publishing.

• 2025 Harry Braverman Paper Award for Labor Studies Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP)

Mott, Katherine. Awaiting editorial decision at Social Problems. “‘A never-ending conveyor belt of people and their garbage:’ Examining reverse logistics retail work.”

Mott, Katherine. In Progress. “Raging against the broken machine: Workers’ experiences of planned obsolescence.”

Building Tenant Power in Syracuse, NY

I co-conducted a six-month ethnography of a local housing activist group, Syracuse Tenants Union, and interviewed Syracuse tenants organizing alongside their neighbors to win better housing conditions. We are currently preparing an article for submission to Journal of Contemporary Ethnography that highlights the tensions of tenant organizing with activist groups. This research was funded in part by the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration.

PUBLICATIONS

Mott, Katherine and Amanda Beavin. In Progress. “Negotiating Strategy: Tenant Urgency and Activist Burnout in Syracuse, NY.”

Precarity Beyond Food: Examining Food Access Efforts in Syracuse, NY

I spent eight months observing and eating lunch with soup kitchen attendees in one of Syracuse’s poorest neighborhoods to understand how poor people face the burdens of a complicated and austere welfare state. Rather than recognizing their shared position relative to the state, poor people reproduce the state’s deserving-undeserving dichotomy.

PUBLICATIONS

Mott, Katherine. 2022. “‘Hurry up and wait’: Stigma, Poverty, and Contractual Citizenship.” Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 45:271-290.

• 2021 Graduate Student Paper Award for Sociology and Social Welfare Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP)

Mott, Katherine. 2019. “‘Lotta Food, No Money’: Syracuse’s Poor Have Challenges that are Much Bigger than Food Access.” Lerner Center Research Brief Series. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion.

Mott, Katherine. 2019. “Precarity Beyond Food: How an Independent Grocery Store Shed Light on the Limitations of Food Access Efforts in Syracuse, New York.” ProQuest Publishing. Syracuse University.