A European Societies and their Integration
European societies face global challenges and socio-demographic changes that threaten their integration and cohesion. To deepen our understanding of these challenges and changes, Department A’s research has traditionally focused on the development of market economies and welfare states, social inequalities shaped by education and labour market institutions, and social integration in ethnically heterogeneous societies.
Current research projects continue the comparative analysis of living conditions and life chances in Europe, including socio-psychological and economic perspectives alongside purely sociological ones. While acknowledging the long-term challenges of globalization and European integration, they also take into account the more recent repercussions of the 2008 economic crisis, which has not only altered individual societal risks but also accelerated pressures on institutions to reform. Within this scope, Department A conducts in-depth research to investigate the consequences of international migration, demographic changes and an increasingly heterogeneous population, combining the sociological understanding of long-term processes and cross-national institutional diversity with the analysis of current socio-demographic challenges to the integration of European societies. Analytically and empirically, research in Department A aims to integrate macro-level institutional and micro-level actor-centred perspectives as well as to detect the social processes and mechanisms underlying cross-national, time-related, and social group difference.