VUB researcher awarded major European grant to study link between racism and social immobility
Professor Pieter-Paul Verhaeghe, from the Brussels Institute for Social and Population Studies (BRISPO) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant. Over the next five years, he will use the funding to lead the MARIS project.
MARIS stands for 'A Multidimensional Analysis of Racism and Immobility at the Societal Level'. The project will explore the relationship between racism and intergenerational social immobility. The ERC grant, worth almost 2 million euros, will provide the financial foundation for the research.
Interconnection
According to VUB, MARIS is innovative because it is the first project to examine the interconnection between racial discrimination and the lack of upward social mobility across different European countries.
We know that exclusion never operates in just one way
"We know that exclusion never operates in just one way," Verhaeghe explains. "Access to education, income, social status and class is often shaped by how people are perceived and treated based on their ethnic or socio-economic background. These sources of inequality have rarely been studied in relation to one another, especially from a comparative, cross-national perspective”.
Unique approach
"What makes MARIS unique is that we are asking not only whether racism and immobility are linked, but also how this relationship evolves across countries and how policy interventions can influence it," he adds. The research deliberately cuts across disciplinary boundaries, connecting sociology with social psychology, economics, and political science. "In doing so, we hope to create a new paradigm in the social and economic sciences."
The project will combine four dimensions of racism with four dimensions of social immobility, mapping how structural barriers overlap and accumulate. Verhaeghe hopes that, by adopting this integrated approach, he will gain an understanding of not only how inequalities are reproduced, but also the circumstances in which people succeed in overcoming them.
#FlandersNewsService | Building M, the main administrative building at VUB University, houses the professors' desks. © BELGIAN_FREELANCE
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