Sociologist Erin Hatton's Coerced: Work under Threat of Punishment (2020) is a must-read for US labor historians interested in the carceral state, American higher education's employment policies, unfree labor practices, and legal definitions of an employee with basic workplace rights. This book connects all of these vital topics in a study of the importance of coercion in the contemporary American labor market by focusing on the legal, legitimate threats to people's status, which has profound implications for their individual livelihoods.
Coerced focuses on how today's prisoners, workfare participants, college athletes, and graduate student researchers are compelled to work. Hatton admits they represent “diverse cases,” but they are nevertheless “all sociolegally constructed as something other than ‘workers’ doing something other than ‘work’ ” (8 – 9). None have the employment rights that have established the power dynamics in workspaces in the formal labor market. This deficiency gives corrections officers, case workers,...