Research Cluster Integration and Social Cohesion

The integration and social cohesion research group explores various facets associated with the incorporation of migrants into receiving societies and different societal domains, including employment, education, housing, and health, as well as broader aspects of civic participation and legal inclusion.  

The relation between migrants and host communities is also explored, including discrimination, racism, classism and other ideologies that justify inequality, unequal treatment, and radicalisation processes, while taking into account the inherent diversity of both groups and the dynamic nature of this relationship, understanding it as the result of both concrete interactions and the political and social construction of meaning and power imbalances associated with broader patterns of inequality and differences in social, cultural and economic capital. The research group also examines the politics of migrant integration in a multi-level governance context and the role of different actors, including politicians, policy makers, public institutions and service providers, civil society actors, and migrants themselves, in formulating relevant policies, taking into account different levels of governance, sociality (micro-meso-macro), and different geographical scales (local to supranational).  

The members of the research cluster adhere to an inter- and transdisciplinary approach. They stem from different social science disciplines, such as political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, and law/international relations.

Current related projects

• Easyrights
• SPRING, see also: integrationpractices.eu/
• Whole-COMM, see also: https://whole-comm.eu/