In this dissertation, I provide an examination of the relationship between difference (as it relates to national origin and gender) and the occupational identity of analytical chemists working in the United States. This project explores the ways in which aspects of worker difference play a role in the performance and understanding of occupational tasks, responsibilities, membership, and acceptance. Four research problems motivate this project: First, literature regarding foreign-born workers has focused primarily on the individual as the site of difference and has yet to engage how systemic aspects of difference affect organizing. Second, domestic discourses of difference or nation are the most regularly engaged in studies of work, but these areas are rarely examined together, which has stunted our ability to consider questions of global diversity in organizing. Third, research on science and technical work has yet to directly address the foreign-born worker, thereby ignoring a significant population performing scientific work. Fourth, intersectional research on difference is still scarce in work scholarship, which has limited our ability to consider how discourses of difference interact in the occupation.

I took a mixed methodological approach using surveys and in-depth interviews to address these research problems. I used the communicative construct of occupational identity to bridge epistemological and methodological difficulties associated with using multiple methods in order to answer the following research question: In what way, if any are discourses of difference and socially coded characteristics experienced and understood as part of the occupational identity of the analytical chemist?

The consequent analysis considers the ways that difference impacts analytical chemistry work and the worker. I argue that difference plays a defining role in occupational identity—specifically, conceptions of “good science” conceived through occupational decisional premises and conceptions of the “good scientist” developed through discourses of intersectional difference. I assert that the construction of difference in science is created and maintained through the invocation and reliance on epistemologically varied definitions of difference.

This study adds to contemporary scholarship through an examination of how aspects of difference (conceptualized as discourses and socially coded characteristics) contribute in diffuse ways to the development and understanding of the occupation.