Racialized Burdens: Applying Racialized Organization Theory to the Administrative State

2022/01/27 by Victor Ray, Pamela Herd, Donald P. Moynihan +1 · 18 citations
Social Sciences · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Judicial and Constitutional Studies #Law, Rights, and Freedoms

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/jopart/muac001

openalex publication_date 2022/01/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

Abstract This article develops the concept of racialized burdens as a means of examining the role of race in administrative practice. Racialized burdens are the experience of learning, compliance and psychological costs that serve as inequality reproducing mechanisms. To develop this concept, we examine administrative burdens in the US state from the theoretical perspective of racialized organizations. Using examples from attempts to access citizenship rights—via immigration, voting and the social safety net—we illustrate some key points. First, racialized burdens combine control of access to resources and ideas about racial groups in ways that typically disadvantage racially marginalized groups. Second, while still promising fair and equal treatment, racially disproportionate burdens can be laundered through facially neutral rules and via claims that burdens are necessary for unrelated reasons. Third, racialized burdens emerge when more explicit forms of racial bias in policies or administrative practices become illegal, politically untenable or culturally unacceptable. Racialized burdens neatly carry out the “how” in the production of racial inequality while concealing, or providing an alibi for, the “why.”

Citations

• Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony
• The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924
• Policy Feedback in a Racialized Polity
• Administrative Capital and Citizens’ Responses to Administrative Burden
• “It Takes a While to Get Used to”: The Costs of Redeeming Public Benefits
• Keeping Kids in Care: Reducing Administrative Burden in State Child Care Development Fund Policy

Cited by

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• Safeguarding Merit: Citizen Support for Civil Service Protections Against Political Interference
• A Tale of Two Programs? Stigma and Administrative Burdens in CHIP and Medicaid
• The Double Burden of School Choice
• The growth of policies, rules, and regulations: A review of the literature and research agenda
• Transnationalizing Reception: Racial Scripts, Institutional Logics, and Congolese Refugee Processing in the United States and Brazil
• Threats to Legitimacy in Local Employment Law Enforcement Regimes Among Immigrant and Racially Marginalized Small Business Owners
• Experiences of Administrative Burden in Context: Exploring Differences Across Countries, Policy Domains, and Socio‐Demography
• Extending the Bridge: Racialized Organizations, Inhabited Institutionalism, and Racialization
• Gauging the Gap: Inequality of Time Use When Seeking Government Services
• Improving Delivery of the Social Safety Net: The Role of Stigma
• Reconceptualizing Parents as Policy Agents Within Special Education
• Does Reducing Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Workload Enhance Equity in Program Access? Evidence from Burdensome College Financial Aid Programs
• How Long‐Held Perceptions of Deservingness Continue to Shape Public Attitudes About Program Eligibility
• Criminal justice as racialized organizations: Evidence from ethnographies of police, courts, and jails
• Administrative Errors and Race: Can Technology Mitigate Inequitable Administrative Outcomes?
• Losing Out: How the Public Assesses Coverage Loss due to Administrative Burden
• Toward a Theory of Racialized Institutional Logics in Education

Related

• A Theory of Racialized Organizations
• Institutional Injustice: How Public Administration Has Fostered and Can Ameliorate Racial Disparities
• Race-Ing the Bootstrap Climb: Black and Latino Bureaucrats in Post-Reform Welfare Offices
• Administrative Errors and Race: Can Technology Mitigate Inequitable Administrative Outcomes?
• The Political Economy of Administrative Burdens: A Theoretical Framework for Analyzing the Organizational Origins of Administrative Burdens