Coordinators: José Manuel Mendes and Pedro Hespanha

This thematic area focuses on subjects that have been relevant for the Centre for Social Studies since its foundation. More recently, the work conducted by two of its Research Groups in particular — Social Policies and Citizenship and Work and Trade Unionism — has focused on the following main topics:

• the new welfare pluralism;
• alternative production systems;
• North/South sustainable development assistance;
• trade-unionism and the transformation of employment;
• social classes and social inequalities.

Concerning welfare pluralism, special attention has been given to social protection produced informally by civil society, through the work of communities, social networks and primary groups, in the context of what we call the welfare society. The study of the importance of the third sector in Portugal in the configuration of the relations between the State and society, has also been relevant for this Thematic Area.

Research on North/South sustainable development assistance has led to comparative studies (mainly between Europe and Brazil) of new and old inequalities, the impact of globalisation on uncertainty and social risk and the analysis of social domination, discrimination and “social apartheid”.

The analysis and evaluation of activation policies, equal opportunities policies and the participation of women in the labour market have been central to this Thematic Area.

The study of trade-unionism and labour relations, in an international context of increasing precariousness and delocalisation, has been crucial to the understanding of the local, national and global dynamics pertaining to work and employment.

Research on the Portuguese class structure and social mobility patterns — in recent years in cooperation with a Lisbon team (ISSP 1999 project, coordinated by researchers from ICS) — has had as its main objective the development of an international comparative perspective. This work has been complemented with a generational study of social protest and the configurations that facilitate or hinder participatory democracy.