The aim of this study is to create a system of indicators for the minimum income scheme in Portugal (Rendimento Social de Inserção), serving as a basis for the creation of a model for evaluating the service provision of this policy by local authorities. The research question that will guide our work is to what extent does the decentralisation of competences to the local level contribute to alleviating the causes of poverty and improving the quality of the services provided? The decentralisation of competences has been seen as a mechanism for combating poverty. Several international organisations, such as the World Bank, the OECD and the European Union, refer to the potential of decentralisation to enable local authorities to develop sustainable development processes. Several authors such as Von Braun and Groot (2000) and Crawford and Hartmann (2008) argue in favour of decentralisation, pointing out that local governments are better informed about the needs of their populations than the central state. Proximity makes it easier to monitor the citizen-beneficiary and can also allow for easier and more effective evaluation of social workers. However, some questions arise, namely the fact that these positive impacts of decentralisation depend on two factors, namely the resources that are made available to local authorities (Jütting e Corsi, 2005 and Harris and Posner, 2022) and also how local authorities themselves implement programmes (Harris and Posner, 2022). In the Netherlands, for example, during the process of decentralisation of competences (2003 and 2015), the problem that emerged was related to the way social workers acted in the execution and monitoring of social assistance recipients, who adopted a welfare philosophy. And it was through the initiative of the municipalities that they were open to changing the paradigm of the social intervention model (Oliveira, 2024). In Portugal, there were those who opposed decentralisation on the grounds that local authoriti...

O projeto “Inquérito aos jovens sobre o mercado de trabalho e o sistema de segurança social em Portugal” resulta de uma parceria entre o Observatório das Desigualdades e o Observatório do Emprego Jovem, ambos filiados no Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. Surge na sequência de um convite da Comissão para a Sustentabilidade da Segurança Social, criada pela Ministra do Trabalho, Solidariedade e Segurança Social do XXIII Governo Constitucional de Portugal, enquadrada através do Despacho n.º 9126/2022, de 26 de julho. O estudo assenta num questionário dirigido a jovens, que visa recolher informação sobre a situação no mercado de trabalho e as representações e perceções acerca da segurança social. Esta pesquisa é, todavia, independente e cientificamente autónoma das análises e das perspetivas desenvolvidas pela Comissão.   Os dados foram recolhidos entre 12 de dezembro de 2022 e 29 de janeiro de 2023, através de um inquérito online, através de uma amostra bola de neve, que beneficiou de contactos institucionais e de redes sociais. A amostra, após a validação da base de dados, é de 5.077 jovens, com idades compreendidas entre os 18 e os 35 anos com uma distribuição relativamente uniforme em termos etários. Da análise dos resultados irá ser produzido um livro coletivo e espera-se a elaboração de outras publicações.      

A growing body of comparative political economy literature argues that western countries are increasingly dualised. According to this strand, the gap between workers is expanding. Some workers are covered by collective agreements, have standard contracts and have access to standard social protection, while others hold atypical contracts, have access to a second-tier welfare state and are not covered by collective agreements. This dualisation process results from labour legislation reforms that allowed the spread of atypical contracts; welfare state reforms, that allowed the creation of residual, income-tested, and in-work benefits for some individuals; and collective bargaining reforms that eroded collective bargaining coverage. The covid-19 pandemic has made even clearer the need to rethink these divisions, which are characterised by the existence of winners and losers. The guiding question of this project is: under which conditions can dualisation be overcome and solidarity fostered? The project focusses on one key dimension of dualisation: the regulation and use of atypical contracts, i.e. fixed-term contracts, self-employment and agency work. From our perspective, the type of contract is a key element of dualisation, and is of paramount importance to explain labour market inequalities and the disintegration of solidarity in the sphere of work. Thus, when speaking about reforms that foster solidarity, we mean inclusive reforms that improve the protection provided by atypical contracts. The main argument of the project is that fostering solidarity involves three levels of action: labour law (national), collective bargaining (meso and micro) and workplace-level arrangements (micro). Labour law plays a decisive role in establishing the conditions under which atypical contracts can be used. Collective agreements are important because they can define better (or worse) conditions than those established in the labour code regarding the use of atypical contracts. And it ...

Every year, the Ministry of Education's DGEEC systematises school attendance and results obtained by students in primary and secondary education according to their nationality and it is possible to know that school performance (measured by transition rates and by referral to non-regular education routes) varies considerably according to the nationality in question. It is not possible to know the impact on these results of a set of variables which predict them, such as the socio-educational conditions of the parents, the gender of the pupil or the socio-ethnic composition of the school and the class attended. Are the effects similar for all national origins? Which variables are more decisive in the achievement of students with a migrant background?It was possible to establish a protocol between CIES-Iscte and DGEEC/MEC that makes it possible to regularly (annually) provide statistical information collected by MEC regarding students from immigrant backgrounds in the form of micro data. Using this information, we intend to answer the questions raised, drawing a portrait of the schooling of these children and young people throughout the present decade in our country. The project is supported by the Observatory of Inequalities.

The collaborative Laboratory for Work, Employment and Social Protection (CoLABOR) will mobilise resources from academia, companies, public administration and social and solidarity economy organisations, with a view to gleaning a more in-depth understanding of the present and foreseeable problems in three central areas of activity: a) work and employment; b) social protection; and c) the social and solidarity economy. CoLABOR’s action plan will generate outputs that can be appropriated both nationally and internationally by private sector companies, the public administration, and entities from the social and solidarity sector.

EmployALL aims to study the relationship of mutual dependence between employment and social protection. In the context of the Great Recession and the ensuing 'adjustment program' in Portugal, this interdependence manifested itself as an articulation of a crisis of employment with a crisis of social protection. The employment crisis involved an unprecedented rise of unemployment, wage decline and precarious work, which increased the burden on social protection. The outcome, aggravated by cuts directly affecting social protection, was a shortfall in the responsiveness of the system to new social vulnerabilities - a crisis of social protection. The two concomitant crises widened inequalities in diverse territorial contexts. EmployALL addresses the following research questions: 1) Which mechanisms connect employment (unemployment, precarious work and wage decline) to social protection (its capacity to respond to increasing demands), and to what extent the increased pressure on, and the social protection system shortfalls have contributed to augment risks in employment and unemployment? 2) To what extent is the articulation of the employment and social protection crises converging in the production and cumulative reproduction of inequalities, and how is this process to be reversed through public policies? The project will draw on an interdisciplinary methodological framework and will use quantitative and qualitative methodologies at different territorial scales. A structure of 6 work packages (WP) will be adopted. WP1 will be devoted to the theoretical mapping of the relations of mutual dependence between employment and social protection. WP2 will characterize the employment and social protection crises in Portugal, in the context of the EU, at various national territorial scales. WP3 aims to characterize the reciprocal impacts between the employment and social protection crises in the frame of the evolving financialized accumulation regime, with particular focus on how ...

In the early 21st century, housing has returned to the centre of struggles and political debate in the Western world. In Southern Europe, housing crises, and intensifying dynamics of gentrification and touristification, have contributed to the emergence of new housing social movements around issues such as displacement, and social and economic exclusion. Strongly affected by these trends, Lisbon is in the midst of a perfect storm for housing, generated by the intersection of the long wave of economic crisis and austerity with recent touristification, gentrification and massive real estate investment. At the same time, demographic changes (e.g. ageing, migrations and mobility) are reshaping local urban identities, which are reflected in new forms of housing activism. Social movement, urban policy and demographic studies seem to have dealt with housing in a compartmentalised way. By focusing on the city of Lisbon, a casen paradigmatic of contradictory trends but still under-theorised, HOPES aims to intertwine these analytical fields. Moving from the micro and meso dimensions of housing activism, HOPES will enlarge its scope to macro aspects such as national housing policies and global trends. HOPES' main questions are: how, and to what extent, do new housing movements mirror wider housing policies and dynamics? Which are the reciprocal influences between movements, political actors and globalising trends? What are the possible scenarios and futures in terms of housing and urban trends? HOPES adopts an interdisciplinary perspective and a mixed methodology. First, HOPES will analyse and cross information on new housing activism (ethnography, protest events and frames analysis), policy (critical policy analysis) and dynamics (mapping and demographic analysis) in housing in Lisbon. This study will be enriched by an action research partnership with the housing association Habita, and by cooperation with the FCT funded project exPERts on rehousing policies in Lisbon metro. ...

The main purpose of this project is to investigate the effects of the 2007-2008 financial crisis on the Portuguese social security system. Bearing in mind that the Portuguese Constitution (article 63) enshrines social security as a fundamental and universal right we will assess the effects of austerity, which meant, during the 'adjustment' period, the reduction of social benefits' degree of generosity and scope, either directly due to the cuts that were made in the respective amounts, or indirectly, notably through the labour markets reform (e.g. flexibility, job insecurity and the decrease of wage incomes) and also through the degradation of public services that implied a loss of adequacy and effectiveness in the benefits provided. We also wish to analyse to what extent the crisis has been a pretext to engage by stealth into a systemic reform of the Portuguese social security system that by jeopardizing those main constitutional rules might lead to a permanent violation of social rights and ultimately to the reconfiguration of the Portuguese Welfare State. This means to assess in which way the crisis exceptional context, the moment of 'financial state of exception' that, according to the constitutional court, justified a temporary suspension and restriction of social security rights (maxime in the case of old age pensions), might have implied after all a new state of normality (due to the alleged structural financial fragility of the system) - the normality of the financial state of exception.

The project focuses on the migration of Nepalese to work red fruit agriculture in the south of Portugal and the relationship with trafficking for labor exploitation. It has two main objectives, i) the research of the experiences and ii) the contribution for actions of prevention and fight against the traffic. In order to do so, it initially intends to conduct interviews in the country of origin to  Nepalese immigrants before they leave Nepal and to those who have since returned from Portugal, as well as to the Nepalese immigrants in the country of destination (Portugal), in order to understand the specific role of recruitment companies and trafficking throughout the migratory process. The research will be published in two scientific papers. For the contribution of actions the team members intend to discuss with the different agents related with the Nepalese migration process (recruiters, managers of agricultural companies, municipalities, SEF, ACT, Human Trafficking Observatory, etc.) to create initiatives to prevent and combat trafficking in human beings for labor exploitation, as well as greater visibility and articulation for the activities already implemented, as it is the case of "New Generation of Local Security Contracts "in Serpa, Ministry of Internal Administration. The discussion of actions will focus on three points. Firstly, the way in which seasonal agricultural work can be regulated should be based on Directive 2014/36 - EU of 26/02/2014 on the entry of third country nationals into seasonal work, which is still to be transposed to Portugal. Secondly, initiatives for a greater participation of Nepalese in Portuguese language courses, already existing in municipalities in the south of Portugal (AA.VV. 2015), as one of the main resources of integration and qualification of immigrants. Thirdly, the translation of Portuguese labor legislation selected for English and Nepalese, to empower Nepalese workers and entrepreneurs of recruitment agencies.  Team: ...

Transversal scientific project that includes several research groups from CIES-IUL whose main objective is to relate the problems of social inequalities with different dimensions and sectors of the Portuguese society, based on comparative analysis at the European level. The project's main outputs are: the organization and editing of a collective book, the organization of an international colloquium, the creation of an internet page, the production of short thematic films.

Due to the tremendous impact of the financial crisis on social structures, inequality has become a matter of heightened social concern. This has been manifest by diverse public reactions, particularly among young people whose level of social vulnerability has increased mainly due to unemployment growth and precarious work. This project will address one fundamental question: to what extent the increase in unemployment and precarious work will cause a rise in social vulnerability and a narrowing of life expectations among the young population? The project is intended to (a) characterize and compare the structural changes in terms of social inequalities within the different European countries, focusing specifically the rise in youth unemployment and precarious work; (b) take stock of the national and European legislation governing the labour market and social protection programs; (c) identify perceptions of the changes on the part of players left in vulnerable positions; (d) assess the effect of public policies, and design policies that help improve social cohesion. The research will use different methodological approaches: statistical comparative analysis of microdata from national and international databases, in-depth interviews, documental analysis of legislation and evaluation and prospection of public policies.

This project aims to deconstruct a common image of ‘suburbia’ as a uniform space, where people live similar lives in similarplaces. In order to better understand the reality behind this stereotype we will inquiry into the hypothetical causal relationship between the intensity of urban sprawl and its negative effects in terms of ecological balance, social fragmentation and citizenship practices.

The aim of this project is to identify and understand, from a theoretical and methodological multidisciplinary approach, thearticulations between the social and institutional representations about the rural and its demands and consumptions, expecting tocontribute to the design and implementation of informed and more effective development strategies. Based on empirical evidence tobe collected from a representative sample of the Portuguese population, from different documents and sources and from the policies and measures developed throughout the last 25 years, the project aims to connect the analysis of the different social images and representations about the rural with the assessment of its diverse demands and consumptions, as well as with the analysis of the development strategies implemented in rural areas. Specifically the project aims to assess the central aspects in the formation and content of those representations, relating them to the main motivations, perceptions and configurations of the demands and consumptions as well as to the analysis of the development strategies implemented in rural areas.

Through this research project, of a qualitative nature, we will seek to build knowledge on the integration of the population cohort between 18 and 34 years of age in poorly qualified and low paid employment. The specific circumstances of this position in the labour market will be studied in articulation with variables such as educational qualifications, occupational skills, labour regime and types of household. Fieldwork will be carried out in four municipalities with distinct features: Lisbon, Oporto, Setúbal and Guimarães.

This project aims to study the voluntary associations that develop their activity in specific contexts (urban or rural), seeking to contribute to an improvement in the quality of life, namely by dynamizing or revitalizing (social, cultural and economically) the areas where they are sited. This study will identify and analyse the different moments in the course of a local development project, within the generic formulation of public policies (European and/or national programmes), field implementation strategies, and also, the consequences drawn from local formation of social capital networks.