Furthering the Agenda: Research

Given the multi-faceted nature of the problem, Russian and East European Studies has so far drawn upon a variety of methodological and disciplinary approaches in order to understand the changing dimensions of social inequality in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the country and region-specific expertise of area studies has allowed its research always to be overlaid with and contextualised by knowledge of the cultural and historical specificities defining the position of different groups within Eastern European societies. The nature and effects of social disadvantages associated with gender, class, ethnicity, disability, age, locality, and citizenship continue to be central to the Russian and East European Studies research agenda.

Many of the questions and issues outlined above are currently being explored by the EUREQUAL project, a major study of social inequality in 12 countries across Eastern Europe based at the University of Oxford. EUREQUAL approaches the issue of social inequality as a multi-level problem, using quantitative and qualitative data collected over the past decade to address social inequality at the individual, party, and country levels simultaneously. In this way, the project is able to explore: the changing character of social inequality across Eastern Europe over the course of the post-Socialist period; the impact of social inequality on social mobility and other life chances; the meaning of social inequality both to citizens and to political parties; the impact of differing national institutions and state capacities on levels of and attitudes towards social inequality; and the impact of social inequality on the economic and democratic development of post-Socialist states. To learn more about the project, please see the EUREQUAL website

In order to complement and seek synergies with the research conducted by the EUREQUAL project, CEELBAS has appointed Dr. Charles Walker as Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Social Inequality in Eastern Europe. He is responsible for research, seminars and other academic activities within this strand of the CEELBAS programme. Charles has a background both in History and in the Social Sciences, with degrees from the University of Lancaster and the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham (for further details and a biography, please see Profile)

Charles’ main research interest is in the sociology of youth and the nature of youth transitions to adulthood, within which social inequality is a central theme. It is through the experiences of young people in education, work, housing and family that we are able to see the emergence, intersection and embedding of social divisions rooted in characteristics such as class, gender and ethnicity, as well the impact of structural factors such as locality. Within this area, Charles’ research focuses on young people studying in vocational education systems, which are a particularly important site in terms of the reproduction of social inequalities. Not only do students of vocational education tend to come from disadvantaged backgrounds, but also, by tracking young people into particular forms of employment at a young age, this type of education has always been seen as doing more to embed than to address existing divisions of labour. Furthermore, young people studying in vocational education systems are particularly disadvantaged in modern labour markets, as traditional routes into manual labour have become less and less available to young people who leave school with few academic qualifications. This is especially so in many Eastern European countries, whose industrial and agricultural sectors experienced a severe recession after the collapse of the Socialist system, but whose newer sectors have yet to fill the gap in terms of employment opportunities.

Charles’ doctoral research explored the changing prospects of young people graduating from vocational colleges in the Ul’ianovsk region of Russia, while his post-doctoral research is being conducted in the Russian and Lithuanian cities of St. Petersburg and Vilnius. The research explores the impact of social inequalities rooted in class, ethnicity, locality and gender on the experiences of young people in the two cities, thus drawing comparisons between the emerging education systems and labour markets of post-Socialist states situated within and outside of the eastern borders of the European Union. For more information about this project, including the dissemination of its findings, please see Project Outline

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 735