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The life course perspective combines a rigorous, critical and systematic yet flexible theoretical approach to core sociological issues with methodological and epistemological eclectic nature and potential. Aiming to build bridges between past and future Life Course Research, this project tackles one appraised but underexplored principle, the "linked lives" principle, based on which "each generation is bound to fateful decisions and events in the other's life course". This will allow us to tackle family as a microcosms of inequalities, and as an observatory of interdependency and cross-effects of life events. Using a multi-dimensional logic, this project will ask different but interconnected questions concerning the interdependency of life events across an individual's life (including various spheres of life) and within the family (as a whole individually through some of its members), by developing different methodologies. A quantitative approach, based on the EU-SILC both multilevel and longitudinal data, aims to tackle cross-effects between family, work and wellbeing, both at an European and at the National Portuguese level. This European, macro and comparative level analysis, also provides relevant information about the specificity, or lack thereof, of the Portuguese case, which is useful for the subsequent and at a certain points overlapped qualitative components of the research. A qualitative approach, using primary sources of data (80 to 100 interviewees), intends to put the flesh onto the bones of the understanding of the linkages between certain life events in one or more life courses, by accessing the subjectivities and intentionality of the actions, and also the effects experienced. Biographical interviews will be carried out with life calendars and family trees, which will be subject to content analysis and holistic form analysis. Quantitative longitudinal analysis will also be used for life calendar information. This will be done at both individual and fa...

Biographical research in sociology is usually carried out by means of in-depth interviews where people are asked to tell their life histories or experiences in a given stage of life and/or dimension of existence. Occasionally, secondary materials such as photographs, letters, timelines or life calendars are also used to complement the narrative. In both cases the focus is on first person testimonies, assuming that the information collected through these procedures provides a more direct and reliable access to the events and subjectivity of the life course. Much less explored is the possibility of reconstituting a biography not only in this way, but also on the basis of testimonies of third parties, specifically close people who can talk about the trajectories of the individual being analysed and about the relation they have with that person. What we intend to do in this project is precisely to understand how biographies can be reconstituted and analysed through multiple testimonies, using triangulation and comparison of sources of information. Mobilising a qualitative methodology, by means of biographical interviews, the aim is to comprehend how a person describes and ascribes meanings to her/his life, but also how close people perceive, present and interpret that biographical pathway. Twenty biographies will be analysed, each case being composed of the interview with the nuclear person and about four interviews with her/his family members, friends, colleagues or neighbours (of different kinship, generations, life contexts). In this way it is possible to combine each person's view of herself/himself and her/his biography with the perception that significant others have of those same experiences. Thus, it is intended to articulate an internal perspective with an external one on the same person and respective biography. This analytical strategy enables the study of the temporal, social and relational constitution of a biography, in line with the typical analytical fra...

The research project "Processes of inclusion of women victims of domestic violence: education, vocational training and entrepreneurship" analyzes the process of social and economic autonomy of women who leave violent relationships and enter into a shelter. With three axes of analysis - policies, institutions and individuals (women victims) - the overall objectives of the project are developed at macro, meso and micro level. The project aims to: 1. Assess the importance of political strategies in education, employment and training, social inclusion and equality in the process of social reintegration of victims of domestic violence and the prevention of their revictimization; 2. Map and examine the policies for the social reintegration of the victims and the role of the support institutions, namely shelters; 3. Understand the process of social reintegration of victims of domestic violence who have been hosted in a shelter; to longitudinally analyze the inequality of resources throughout the life course of the woman and the strategies to promote their autonomy and a life project.

This project aims to examine the role of civil society in supporting vulnerable members of the community within the context of social welfare reform, neoliberal policy and new public management initiatives. Pressures of marketization, austerity and statutory intervention are challenging policies to reducing poverty, social inequality and social exclusion and promoting social cohesion and developing social capital. The project involves EU and associated countries that are undergoing significant social and economic change, namely England, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Turkey, whilst non EU countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are newly advanced economic development countries. The project will enhance the understanding and knowledge based models of global sustainable social welfare service delivery.

Using a gender perspective, the aim of this quantitative and qualitative research project is to examine entrepreneurship patterns and dynamics in Portugal, how these patterns and dynamics affect daily functioning of PT SME,and how they affect life course of individual entrepreneurs, especially women.It is crucial for the project to examine the gendered nature of entrepreneurship in Portugal, something which will be connected to a broader, integrated analysis of main determinants explaining the identified patterns of entrepreneurship.This framework needs to be addressed if a deeper understanding of social and cultural determinants of women and men’s entrepreneurship behaviour is to be achieved.A number of articulated methodological strategies will be used in this research.As we wish to achieve an in-depth, understanding of the determinants of entrepreneurship it is necessary to use a multi-level approach.

The main goal of this research is to monitor and to evaluate the ongoing impact of the Portuguese Mutual Guarantee Loans System directed to higher education students. It will be focused on the social and economic portrayal of higher educations students who use this programme, but also on the articulation and complementary of the programme with the public support provided by the state. This study aims also at identifying the parameters and results of similar initiatives existing in other national contexts, namely in OECD countries, which can be compared with the impact and the reach of the Portuguese mutual guarantee loans’ programme.

This projects aims at identifying and analysing typical trajectories of success, failure and dropping-out among higher education students, relating them to structural and institutional parameters, and looking for explanatory factors and best practices. The scope of the project is nationwide and it spreads through the various Portuguese higher education subsystems. The analysis is carried out at three levels: structural, institutional and biographical, using statistical sources, surveys, institutional documents and in-depth interviews. The project is included in the programme “The Promotion of Educational Success and the Fight against Dropping-Out and Failure in Higher Education” of MCTES (Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education) and is supported by FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology). The research team is formed on the basis of a consortium between CIES-ISCTE and ISFLUP, and has also the cooperation of other higher education institutions and students’ unions.

The project aims at producing a first set of assessment items of the PNL (National Reading Plan), regarding its implementation, the attitudes towards reading of different public sectors, and the PNL impacts in fostering reading and literacy. The final goal is to design a proposal for an Evaluation System of the National Reading Plan. A mixed method approach is used, combining documentary analyses, surveys, interviews and case studies.

Quality is a innovative quantitative and qualitative research project that aims to examine how, in an era of major change, European citizens and workers living in different national welfare state regimes and subject to different public and organization trends and policies evaluate the quality of their lives. The project will analyse international-comparative data on the social well-being of citizens and collect new data on social quality in European workplaces in the selected partner countries: UK, Finland, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Hungary and a candidate country for EU enlargement, Bulgaria.

The project wish to contribute to the achievement of full equality between men and women in Europe, promoting changes in gender roles also by way of a better conciliation betwen family and profissional life. The stable presence of women in the labour market is an irreversible fact; therefore, in Europe men and woman have to face the problem of a conciliation of responsabilities in family and work, as well as the necessity to involve men in family life in a wider way.