AXIS 2 : Contemporary Issues of European societies: inequalities, mobilities, and risks

Coordinators : Samim AKGÖNÜL (DRES), Vincent DUBOIS (SAGE), Nathalie PICARD (BETA)

The objective is to offer a panorama of the most salient social, identity and economic issues that mark European societies today. The aim is neither to limit itself to a descriptive inventory, nor to aim for exhaustiveness, but rather to analyse in depth a set of questions that are likely to provide a broader understanding of how European societies are facing problems that outline their contemporary tensions. Thus, income and gender inequalities, urban segregation and tensions related to the city and its decline, as well as forms of social fragmentation, including their identity dimension, will be analysed. We will also revisit mobilities that are inseparably spatial and social: geographical mobilities in relation to employment, transformations of social rights and social policies; migrations in relation to the territorial continuity of the European whole and the countries of origin of immigrants and their descendants. Finally, the new ways of defining and dealing with social problems from the point of view of risks (environmental, health, security...) will be studied.

More generally, the analytical challenge of axis 2 is to consider these issues both as objective realities and as social constructions linked to their collective management, and to account for the dialectical relationship between these two levels. The work carried out will therefore emphasise the way in which the problems that affect European societies and economies work on public institutions and policies and are worked on by them.