The Covid19 outbreak has impacted negatively on the gendered and racial inequalities in science. The closures of schools and care homes imposed more care responsibilities on women, which might have translated in a reduction of their productivity vis-à-vis their male counterparts. Drawing from a multi-method approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods with data triangulation, SAGE19 aims at analysing the consequences of the pandemic on gender inequality in academia and its aftermath.

Even if the world is living in the Age of Migration where fluid mobilities and diversity have become common, certain sudden migration flows disrupt societies of origin and destination, mainly when related to humanitarian crisis. Few decades ago, Venezuela was the jewel of Latin American, with high standards of living and economic prosperity, however in the last years, Venezuelans are experiencing an exodus, representing the largest and fastest migration and refugee flows in the world. Latin American countries are taking these migrants. While their governments are designing specific national and regional policies to deal with this unexpected situation, Latin American societies are displaying an array of attitudes, ranging from open arms to intolerance. Other regions where Venezuelans have settled before (United States and Portugal) have seen their numbers increase, and their responses are under consideration. Due to the novelty of the situation, no research has been carried out yet; what is known comes from relief organization reports and news, thus scientific research is needed to understand how Venezuelans are coping, how these fast processes are taking place and what are the policies in place. Using policy analysis, mass-media analysis and interviews, this project aims to study Venezuelan migration in the context of a humanitarian crisis in three countries that have witnessed increasing inflows, Argentina, Portugal and the United States, with different policy responses. Findings will offer insights for public policy to more adequately address the problems encountered by Venezuelans abroad.

This projects is co-funded by FAMI (Fund for the asilum, migration and integration) and addresses the general thematic "Female migrants and refugees", responding to the recent arrival of refugees to Portugal. By focusing on refugee women, the project aims at understanding the specificities of the experiences of refugee women in Portugal in relation to their trajectories, considering social class, sex, religion, nationality, access to education, health, and learning a new language, as well as their expectations, from a gender and intersectional perspective. We want to unveil what are the challenges and vulnerabilities experienced by them and what are the hosting and integration policies and practices offered by the Portuguese system. The methodology is qualitative, including in-depth interviews, action research and the national, regional and local policies and practices.  

The overall aim of this proposal is to create a transnational interdisciplinary research and training network between European and Latin American Universities and Research centres in order to promote transfer of knowledge and to produce innovative research in the field of the multilevel governance of cultural diversity in a comparative perspective.

Health and citizenship: intercultural disparities and needs in the health attendance of immigrant mothers

The main objectives of the action-research project are:(1) To identify, describe and prioritize the needs of native and immigrant healthcare users with diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, comparing and contrasting the perspectives of health professionals and healthcare users in the perception and definition of these needs.(2) To identify, describe and prioritize the needs of healthcare professionals (doctors and nurses) when dealing with culturally diverse populations, comparing and contrasting the perspectives of immigrant and native professionals.(3) To examine the interplay between the effects of culture and power asymmetries on the needs of immigrant and native healthcare users, at various social-ecological levels. The following sources of power asymmetries will be examined: (a) origin: native vs. immigrant; (b) socioeconomic inequalities, (c) gender; and (d) role in healthcare interactions: doctor/nurse vs. patient.(4) To analyze good practices in the field of cultural competence in healthcare within the European Union, paying particular attention to the role of power asymmetrical relations between health professionals and healthcare users.(5) To identify the abilities required for the provision of culturally competent healthcare in contexts of cultural and human diversity, considering the role of asymmetrical power in health and healthcare at various social-ecological levels.(6) To make recommendations for interventions aimed at improving the ability of health professionals, both doctors and nurses, to meet the needs of healthcare users with diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, with the final purpose of promoting culturally competent healthcare in Portugal, based on values of social justice and equality.(7) To make recommendations for interventions aimed at promoting the empowerment of culturally diverse healthcare users through the enhancement of health citizenship and health literacy.(8) To elaborate recommendations for developing inte...

This project focuses on health citizenship of migrant pregnant women, as a first step to enact citizenship rights.

Our principal aim is to describe, analyze and compare new super-diverse convivial contexts, as they relate to the process of migrations shaping new cultural realms. Our approach does not involve the idealization of harmonic intercultural relations but considers convivial contexts as new fields of intercultural tensions and interactions as an attempt to understand their dynamics and the social, historic and personal factors that lead to willingness to coexist with ethnic heterogeneity or to reject it. Consequently, it envisions applying an innovative framework to understanding intercultural relations among national and migrant populations. From the perspective of social topography, the new convivial cultures are not associated with a specific geographic space. They correspond to different public contexts in which people with links to various ethnic or cultural groups interact. The research will focus on formal/informal settings linked to distinct social functions in each city: Leisure & spaces dedicated to religious practices; Market/shopping area (open-air or indoor market frequented by various ethnic and cultural groups); School/education (where intercultural relations take place between generations and groups-key for overseeing societal evolution of intercultural dialogue); These spaces are important for grasping the real meaning of intercultural relations because as Amin stated, even if “ the national frame of racial and ethnic relations remains important, much of the negotiation of difference occurs at the very local level, through everyday experiences and encounters”.

Undocumented migrants (UDM), estimated to cover up to 15% of all migrants in the EU, are a relevant and complex challenge for European public health and health care. UDM are vulnerable groups with high health risks also threatening public health (HIV, TBC, etc.). Service provision for UDM is precarious due to e.g. late contact, language, no entitlement, uncertain legal/financial frameworks. Health policy has to deal with contradictory aims and criteria from public health, human rights, security and law enforcement policies.The project will improve knowledge to manage these complex problems by collecting existing practice in health policy and health services in the EU. It will identify transferable good practices optimizing between criteria of quality of care, stress reduction for providers, and avoidance of attraction for clandestine migration. Perspectives of policy, providers and clients will be included in assessments of needs, strategies and problems.Thus, the project aims at improving the level of health protection for the people of Europe by addressing migrants’ and immigrants’ access, quality and appropriateness of health and social services as important wider determinants for health, focusing on health care services for undocumented migrants (UDM) as an especially vulnerable group, an increasing public health risk and a group providing difficulties for health care providers and health policy.

This project proposes a sociological research on the Portuguese emigration and emigrants in the Plata-Basin region (Southern Brazil, the Pampas and Litoral regions in Argentina, and Uruguay). The relevance of the study is emphasised by two features of the Portuguese migration flows that differ from global international trends: first, emigration is not a circumstantial but rather a structural characteristic of the Portuguese society (Godinho, 1978), in the sense that it is a persistent historical pattern; second, the country has a notable specificity if compared to other national contexts: it is both an immigration and emigration country. Recent data show that emigration flows not only co-exist with new immigration waves, but have even been intensified in recent years. Considering the social and political impact of migratory flows, the project sets two main objectives: first, to develop an analysis of the conditions that framed the Portuguese emigration to the Plata-Basin region during the last half-century, and to depict a sociological 'portrait' of those emigrant communities, some of which have been mostly ignored until now (namely those in Argentina and Uruguay); second, to focus on socio-cultural identities with a view to investigating their relation with the life trajectories of the emigrants. In order to achieve these objectives, the project is methodologically based on a mixed design. It aims at conciliating the analysis of statistical data and documents from a variety of sources at an aggregate level (statistical series, legislation, public policies, etc.) with a survey of the Portuguese associations in the region, complemented with in-depth case studies of biographical trajectories (life-histories).