Coordination: Hermes Costa, José Manuel Mendes and Stefania Barca

This Research Group works on the issue of social policies, as these shape the basic rights of access to a full citizenship based on decent work, quality of life and environment and equal opportunities. In a context of generalized crisis of the Welfare State, POSTRADE adopts a critical approach that promotes new epistemological and analytical perspectives about major issues currently under debate, such as: the sustainability of the Welfare State, the fragmentation of labour markets, demographic evolution, global environmental changes, with all the resulting social consequences and risks for the disadvantaged and excluded social segments.
The main focus results from the combination of projects and subject areas developed by the Research Group’s team, in other words, the concern for understanding and producing diagnoses within the field of social policies, without losing sight of the critical analysis of the present social inequalities – subject to a constant reconstruction – based on dimensions as significant as labor relations, the role of market, State action and social movements both at local and global levels.
A special attention is also given to the study of social production modes based on demarketed networks and processes, which boost sociability relationships and forms of solidarity economy, resistant to the hegemony of global capitalism. 

Some researchers of the Research Group also participate on the Study Group on Solidarity Economy of the Centre for Social Studies – ECOSOL/CES