DATE: 4-5:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 29, 2017

EVENT: Social policy expert Kristin Seefeldt will discuss her research on the challenges to upward mobility faced by many working families in Detroit.

Seefeldt, assistant professor of social work and public policy at the University of Michigan, spent six years conducting in-depth interviews with women in Detroit. She has charted the increasing social isolation of many low-income workers, particularly African-Americans, and analyzed how economic and residential segregation are keeping them from achieving the American Dream.

While education, employment and homeownership have long been considered stepping stones to the middle class, Seefeldt says that many working families only have access to a separate but unequal set of poor-quality jobs, low-performing schools and declining housing markets that offer few chances for upward mobility.

Seefeldt is the author of “Abandoned Families: Social Isolation in the Twenty-First Century,” published in December by the Russell Sage Foundation.

The talk will be followed by a book signing. It will be livestreamed at myumi.ch/a8nvW. Join the conversation at #policytalks.

PLACE: Weill Hall, Annenberg Auditorium, 735 S. State St., Ann Arbor (view map)

SPONSORS: Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, School of Social Work, U-M’s Poverty Solutions initiative

More Information: 

• Abandoned Families: Social Isolation in the Twenty-First Century
• Kristin Seefeldt