Day care availability and awareness of gendered economic risks: how they shape work and care norms
Silke Büchau, Marie-Fleur Philipp, Pia S. Schober, C. Katharina Spiess

Family policies not only provide money, time and infrastructure to families, but also convey normative assumptions about what is considered desirable or acceptable in paid work and family care. This study conceptualises and empirically investigates how priming respondents with brief media report-like information on existing day care policy entitlements and economic consequences of maternal employment interruptions may change personal normative judgements about parental work–care arrangements. Furthermore, we analyse whether these effects differ between groups of respondents assumed to vary in their degree of affectedness by the information as well as previous knowledge. The theoretical framework builds on the concept of normative policy feedback effects (Soroka and Wlezien, 2010; Gangl and Ziefle, 2015) combined with social norm theory (Bicchieri, 2017) and human cognition theories (Evans and Stanovich, 2013). The study is based on a fully randomized survey experiment combined with a vignette experiment in Wave 12 of the German Family Panel (pairfam). It applies linear and ordinal logistic regressions with cluster-robust standard errors to a sample of 5,783 respondents. Our results suggest that priming respondents with information on day care policy and long-term economic risks of maternal employment interruptions increases acceptance of intensive day care use across the full sample and especially for mothers with children below school entry age. It further increases support for longer maternal hours spent in paid work among childless women and mothers with school-aged children. Norms regarding paternal working hours are largely unaffected by the information given in this survey experiment.
The study will be published online soon in the Journal of European Social Policy.

Global-Tübingen Urbanities Research Network (G-Turn)

Since 2022, several researchers at the Institute of Sociology and across the University of Tübingen have come together to form a thematic research group to discuss their work on social change in cities worldwide. In 2023, this was formalized as the Global-Tübingen Urbanities Research Network (G-Turn).
G-Turn comes at a time of growing interest in the dynamics of urban life in the social sciences. Until now, urban research has mostly been channeled and shaped by regional foci (e.g. on cities in one country or on (part of) a continent (North Africa, East Asia, Western Europe ...). Despite decades of calls for a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of complex social objects such as cities, urban studies generally remain limited to specific disciplines. This can limit the potential for broad-based theorizing of urban change across social space and time. G-Turn represents our efforts to transcend geographical and disciplinary boundaries.  

Globalization and expansion of urban research
The growing G-Turn network now includes researchers studying urban experiences in and around the world (UK, Chile, France, Germany, India, Morocco, South Africa, South Korea...) and from all social sciences (currently anthropology, ethnology, geography, history, literature, sociology, urban studies...).  
Through an annual public lecture series, G-Turn provides a space for urban researchers to share empirical field research in a comparative perspective, with the aim of highlighting changing orders of urban life and identifying similarities and differences between the various studies. The interdisciplinary framework promotes the critical evaluation of different methodological tools to understand and explain urban life (ethnography, life stories, photographs, film...). In parallel, workshops are organized for members of the network to engage with critical urban studies, relational comparativism and dialogue with concepts from post-socialist/post-colonial/de-colonial studies.  
In short, G-Turn reflects the goal of creating an urban research center in Tübingen that contributes to the contemporary re-dynamics of critical urban studies.  

Lecture Series 2023-2024 - Urbanity in Global Perspective: Crises, Change and Continuity
The second lecture series continues the focus on urbanity, but reflects contemporary concerns about the confluence of multiple "crises". Speakers were invited to address the complexity of global urban transformation(s), the interplay between change and continuity, and the various ways in which 'the urban' is associated with 'crises' across different temporal, spatial and ideological frameworks. Following contributions on food banks and poverty in German cities (Timo Sedelmeier) and urban struggles and lifeworlds in Brazil (Hermílio Santos), the program includes further presentations:  

- Theresa Jäckh, 'Urbanity in the Medieval Mediterranean. The Case of Muslim Palermo' (Thursday, November 2, 2023, 4-6 p.m., Large Practice Room 101, Hegelbau)
- Polina Manolova, The productivity of urban 'non-places'. Labor Migration and Resistance in Marxloh, Germany (Thursday, November 30, 2023, 4-6 p.m., Large Practice Room 101, Hegelbau).
 
Everyone is cordially invited to attend the public lectures followed by a drink and Q&A session.  
Further information can be found on the G-Turn website  
If you are interested in becoming a member of the network, please send an e-mail to claire.bullen@uni-tuebingen.de or bani.gill@uni-tuebingen.de.

“A Time of Great Change: How Parents, Friends, and Classmates Shape Adolescents’ Attitudes towards the Gender Division of Labor”

Laia Sánchez Guerrero, Pia S. Schober & Maaike van der Vleuten

Parents are crucial in the construction of their children’s attitudes towards the gender division of labor. However, little is known about the extent to which parents’ influences on their children’s attitudes weaken in favor of peers during adolescence. This study explores how gender beliefs of parents, friends, and classmates shape adolescents’ attitudes towards the gender division of labor in Sweden, Germany, England, and the Netherlands. It extends previous research which predominantly examined parent-child transmission. The analysis draws on 4645 children (at wave 1: Mage = 14.9, SDage = 0.67, females = 50%) of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries. Regression analyses of within-person changes in attitudes show that adolescents on average become more egalitarian from age 15 to 16 and significantly adapt their own beliefs to those of their parents, friends, and classmates. In cases of opposing beliefs, adolescents tended to adapt more strongly to whoever held more egalitarian views, possibly aligning with more widespread norms of egalitarianism. The findings show great similarity in adaptation processes across countries and align well with a multi-layered conceptualization of gender as a social structure that shapes gender attitudes. The study has been published in Journal of Youth and Adolescence in July 2023:
A Time of Great Change: How Parents, Friends, and Classmates Shape Adolescents’ Attitudes towards the Gender Division of Labor | SpringerLink

“Gender typicality of occupational aspirations among immigrant and native youth: The role of gender ideology, educational aspirations, and work values”

Ludovica Gambaro, Janna Wilhelm, and Pia S. Schober

The gender typicality of adolescents' occupational aspirations helps sustain occupational segregation, ultimately contributing to maintain gender stratification. According to sociological and psychological perspectives, adolescents develop occupational aspirations by drawing on their gender beliefs and work-related values. Yet few empirical studies have examined the contribution of these value orientations specifically to the gender typicality of occupational aspirations. Moreover, although children from immigrant backgrounds make up an ever-increasing share of school-age students, there is scant evidence on the gender typicality of their occupational aspirations relative to those of their majority peers. This study investigates variations in the gender typicality of occupational aspirations among adolescents from immigrant and non-immigrant backgrounds at around age 16. It also explores how the gender typicality of different groups' aspired occupations relates to differences in gender ideologies, in educational aspirations, and in the importance attributed to three work values: the possibility to earn high income, to help others, and to think and solve problems. Drawing on a harmonized survey from England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, the analysis uses a sample of 8,574 adolescents, including 1,510 girls and 1,336 boys from immigrant backgrounds. Multinomial logistic regressions estimated the associations with aspired occupations, classified as masculine, integrated, feminine or ultrafeminine based on the proportion of women working in them. Results indicate that boys and girls of immigrant origin aspired to somewhat less gender-typical occupations than their majority peers. Among girls, these differences would be even larger if they were not suppressed by the more traditional gender ideologies held by girls from immigrant backgrounds. In terms of mediating mechanisms, our findings suggest that more ambitious educational aspirations may partly explain these differences. The study has been published at Frontiers of Sociology in June 2023: doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1161131.

Together with Annerose Böhrer (FAU Erlangen) and Heta Tarkkala (Univerity of Helsinki), Marie-Kristin Döbler has published the article "Facemasks, material and metaphors" in The Sociological Review. What is special about this publication is the interplay of texts and images. On the basis of three illustrated "mask stories", the authors and the artist Susi Vetter (https://www.instagram.com/susivetter/) explain how stories help us to deal with crises, to create meaning or, more generally, to process experiences: What and how we tell about the (non-)wearing of masks, their quality, effectiveness, how we discuss who wears them when and why, who gets them as a gift and who has to pay for them, etc. is an important part of our personal, social and cultural processing of the pandemic.
The project was supported by the Dr Hans Riegel Foundation.
The article is available online Open Access https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380261231161970

Hannah Bennani (2023): From experiences to numbers: the production
of international disability statistics, Disability & Society, DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2022.2162859

ABSTRACT
The call for internationally comparable data on disability has been omnipresent in recent disability politics. Several attempts have been made to develop and implement a standardized approach toward disability statistics, with
the Washington Group Short Census Questions (WGSQ) being the most prominent. How does this questionnaire ‘measure’ disability? How do disability statistics translate the diversity of lived experiences into ‘objective’ numbers?
Combining a sociology of quantification and disability studies, this article focuses on the social practices of disability
statistics that contribute to the generation of ‘disability’ as a social category. After contextualizing ‘disability’ in international organizations’ discourses, it uses document analysis to empirically reconstruct statistical experts’
recommendations regarding definition, operationalization, data collection, and processing. The analysis shows how binary categorical boundaries are (re)introduced and successively objectified during this process. It also unfolds a
risk-based approach that underlies the WGSQ and deviates from a social model of disability.

POINTS OF INTEREST
• International Organizations like the United Nations use statistics to illustrate that disabled persons do not have the same opportunities as others.
• For most people, statistics simply mirror reality. However, the article shows that making statistics requires many activities, discussions, and decisions.
• The research looks in detail at a questionnaire developed by international experts. It shows how people are categorized as a ‘person with disabilities’ or a ‘person without disabilities.’
• Today, many people and international organizations agree that the way society is built disables persons with impairments. However, this questionnaire does not cover this social dimension.
• This research is important because it shows that statistics are not politically neutral and have an impact on the lives of disabled persons.

Marie-Fleur Philipp, Silke Büchau, Pia S. Schober, C. Katharina Spieß

Parental leave policies, take-up consequences and changing normative beliefs: Evidence from a survey experiment

This study conceptualizes and provides novel empirical evidence on norm-setting effects of family policies by investigating how priming with parental leave policy-related information may alter normative beliefs regarding the gender division of parental leave in Germany. We implemented a survey experiment in two waves of the representative German GESIS Panel in 2019 and 2020. Respondents received one of three short evidence-based information primers about 1) long-term income risks of maternal employment interruptions, 2) non-significant paternal wage penalties, 3) increasing rates of paternal leave take-up in Germany, or were allocated to the control group that received no further information before rating the division of parental leave in fictitious couples. We apply OLS regression models with lagged dependent variables to a sample of 5,362 vignette evaluations nested in 1,548 respondents. Remarkably, we find that the effects of all three priming conditions vary significantly depending on whether respondents are asked to judge situations for couples where women earn more or less than their partners. Our findings mostly point to stronger effects of priming with information on income risks compared to paternal leave take-up trends and to more pronounced changes in normative beliefs among childless respondents.

Bennani, Hannah (2022): Behinderung klassifizieren. Zur Kontingenz und Normativität von Körperbewertungen in der International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health.

Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie (2022) 47:247–268.

Classifying disability. On the contingency and normativity of body evaluations in the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health Abstract

This article focuses on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) to address the topic of body evaluations. The classification was published by the World Health Organization in 2001 and implements a bio-psycho-social model of disability that locates “disability” in the interaction between physical impairments and social barriers. Most existing studies address the classification from an application-oriented perspective. In contrast, this article starts from the perspectives of the sociology of classification and disability studies. It interprets the ICF as an artifact that establishes measurement conventions and (co-)produces “disability” as a social phenomenon. The classification implements a contingent order that differentiates evaluation criteria, constitutes evaluation objects, and defines evaluation rules. The article reconstructs this order of evaluation using content- and sequence-analytical methods. As a first step, it focuses on the ICF’s structure and categories’ selection, arrangement, and definition and reveals the normativity of the categorical order. Although using neutral language and trying to avoid an orientation on deficits, the classification transports highly normative expectations of “bodies”, “members of society”, and “societies”. At the same time, the analysis shows “bodies” are constituted as distinguishable evaluation objects. In the second part, the article focuses on the rules of evaluation. The analysis of an ICF-based standardized form shows how the embodied existence of human beings is transformed into “problems” of different degrees. “Dis/Abilities” are produced as social facts and can inform other categorization processes.
Keywords Sociology of (e)valuation · Body · Disability · Classification · International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health

Breaking with Traditions? How Parental Separation Affects Adolescents’ Gender Ideologies in the UK
by Marie-Fleur Philipp, Ludovica Gambaro and Pia S. Schober

In the context of increasing deinstitutionalisation of family relationships, our study assesses the argument that parental union dissolution leads to more egalitarian gender ideologies among children, thereby promoting the gender revolution. Integrating a sociological understanding of gender as social structure with social-cognitive theory of gender development, we investigate whether any effect of parental union dissolution can be explained by parents restructuring work and care responsibilities along more egalitarian lines after separation. Although parental separation is an increasingly common experience, gender socialisation research has focused on biological two-parent families. Evidence on variations in gender ideologies by family structures is scant and based mostly on cross-sectional data from US.
Drawing on longitudinal data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, this study applied fixed-effects panel models to estimate the effects of parental union dissolution on gender ideologies of 6,577 adolescents between ages 11 and 14. Parental separation is found to result in more egalitarian gender ideologies toward female employment among boys but not among girls. In line with the role restructuring argument, the positive effect of separation on egalitarianism is driven by boys who maintain frequent contact with their nonresident fathers and whose fathers had rarely had full responsibility for childcare before separation.

More information

Steffen Hillmert, Viktoria Bauer, Sarah Engelhardt, Lisa Köstlmeier und Viktoria Werner:

Legitimacy of group­specific support for college access – Results of an experimental vignette study

This article originated in the context of a recently completed research seminar at our Institute which dealt with questions of education and justice. In the corresponding survey experiment, respondents were asked to decide about possible modifications of college admission procedures, e.g. whether applicants should be credited with a bonus or malus on the admission grade due to their migration background, social origin, effort, etc. The results show that traditional dimensions of social educational inequality tend to be considered in the direction of compensation. Hence, there is evidence of a certain legitimacy of measures in the sense of positive discrimination in university access.

Hillmert, Steffen, Bauer, Viktoria, Engelhardt, Sarah, Köstlmeier, Lisa & Werner, Viktoria (2022): Zur Legitimität gruppenspezifischer Förderung beim Hochschulzugang – Ergebnisse einer experimentellen Vignettenstudie. Swiss Journal of Sociology, 48 (1): 107-135.

Full text at:

www.doi.org/10.2478/sjs-2022-0006

Goldacker Kristina, Wilhelm Janna, Wirag Susanne, Dahl Pia, Riotte Tanja & Prof. Schober Pia: “Shared leave, happier parent couples? Parental leave and relationship satisfaction in Germany” (published January 2022 in Journal of European Social Policy)

As part of the research training project in the master’s programme, we investigated together with Prof. Pia Schober how parental leave policies and uptake may impact heterosexual couples’ relationship satisfaction, focusing on Germany as an example of a country with a history of familialist policies and long maternal leaves that has recently undergone a significant policy shift. The resulting study extends the literature by examining the effects of maternal and paternal leave duration on both partners’ relationship satisfaction while distinguishing between the length of solo, joint and overall leave. The study applies two different methods on data from the Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics (pairfam). First, the study applies fixed-effects regression models (n = 1046 couples) to investigate the impact of parental leave duration on the change in mothers’ and fathers’ satisfaction over the child’s early years. Second, drawing on exogenous variation as a result of the parental leave reform of 2007, which shortened paid leave for mothers and incentivised fathers’ leave take-up, difference-in-difference analyses (n = 1403 couples) analyse reform effects on relationship satisfaction of parents with 3-year-old children. The fixed-effects models indicated a consistent negative impact of maternal – especially solo – leave duration on both mothers’ and fathers’ relationship satisfaction. No significant effects of paternal leave length were found. The difference-in-difference approach revealed a positive reform effect on mothers’ relationship satisfaction. In combination, these results suggest that the reduction in maternal leave as part of the reform has had a greater impact on couples’ relationship quality than the relatively short duration of leave taken by most fathers after the introduction of the individual leave entitlement.

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Babst Axel, Gehrig Franziska, Prof. Dr. Groß Martin, Hofmann Elias, Dr. Lang Volker & Schuler Gabriel: Further Findings from the BMAS-FIS Project "Corona Crisis and Occupational Recognition"

Since the beginning of the pandemic, public acceptance of government-regulated infection control measures, some of which deeply interfere with everyday and social life, has been identified as an important basis for the success of the crisis management. With the aim of preventing a high number of infections and the resulting severe or even fatal courses of disease and overloading of the health care system, far-reaching restrictions on public life and individual freedoms were implemented for the first time since the Federal Republic came into existence.
Against the backdrop of the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant, the discussion about political interventions to prevent contact and increase vaccination rates has once again become more urgent. In this respect, it is of particular interest at this time to identify ways and means to ensure acceptance of the measures. In the BMAS-FIS-funded project "Corona Crisis and Occupational Recognition," this was one of the central questions: Does occupational recognition increase the acceptance of politically installed infection control measures?
Although our data are now almost a year old, they are very suitable for investigating a current, practically relevant question: To what extent does social recognition contribute to the acceptance and support of politically installed infection control measures by the population? Answers to this question can be found in the current, fifth part of the results report of our project.

Ludovica Gambaro, Anthony Buttaro Jr., Heather Joshi, Mary Clare Lennon: Does Residential Mobility Affect Child Development at Age Five? A Comparative Study of Children Born in US and UK Cities

Residential mobility is a common experience among very young children but thought to be a source of disruption to a child’s development. Mobility may have its own direct consequences or reflect families’ capabilities and vulnerabilities. In this study, conducted together with colleagues from UCL Social Research Institute (UK) and CUNY Graduate Center (US), we examined the association between changes of residence and verbal and behavioral scores of children aged 5. Unlike previous studies, we compared two countries, by drawing on the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study in the US (N=up to 1,820) and an urban subsample of the UK Millennium Cohort Study (N=up to 7,967). Because families who move are likely to be different from those who do not move, we applied inverse probability weights to minimize observable selection bias associated with residential mobility and further controlled for a wide range of family characteristics and changes that often co-occur with moves, for example parental separation or job losses. A distinct feature of this study is to categorize moves on the basis of the type of neighbourhood from and into which families move, by linking individual-level longitudinal data to measures of neighbourhood socio-economic composition. Results show that residential moves are not inevitably deleterious to children. In both countries the poorer outcomes of some moves result not from moving per se, but the context in which they occur.

Couples’ communication behaviour and the gender division of family work across the transition to parenthood

by Silke Büchau, Pia S. Schober and Dominik Becker, University of Tübingen & Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training

The majority of couples intends to maintain the division of work after the birth of their first child (Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, 2019; Müller, Neumann, & Wrohlich, 2013). However, in practice the transition to parenthood often increases gender inequalities (Kühhirt, 2012), which tend to persist during the years after childbirth (Grunow et al., 2012; Kühhirt, 2012). This study investigates the conceptual argument that constructive and explicit couple communication may reduce gender inequalities in couples’ division of family work. Using 314 first-time parents from the German Family Panel (pairfam), we apply growth curve models to assess whether partners’ prenatal characteristics explain the division of housework and childcare around the time of childbirth and in the following years. After controlling for gender ideologies and economic resources, male partners’ frequency of positive communication is associated with greater father involvement in housework and childcare from the start. However, neither men’s nor women’s positive communication behaviours dampen the shift towards a more traditional division of housework and childcare in the first years after childbirth. The frequency of partners' negative communication does not correlate with the division of family work.

Being touched by Léo Coutellec, Sebastian J. Moser und Hartmut Rosa
Ethics, epistemology and politics of affects in times of crisis

Do we have to feel the water on our necks before the ecological crisis motivates us to act? Or would it also be possible for us, even though we do not feel hungry ourselves, to actively and collectively oppose a steady increase in social inequalities? Is it possible to be touched or affected by crises in a way that we engage for and with others, beyond slogans or the public proclamation of values, but with body and soul? This dossier aims to contribute to the construction of an ethical, epistemological and political horizon of affects in times of crisis. How can the values that are worth defending resonate with our bodies, respectively all our senses, and thus induce action? How can values also be expressed in the institutions whose logic determines our daily actions and which are at the same time insensitive or "mute" to these values? In other words: How can affects contribute to the formation of a social and political bond?

Networks, streets and socio-spatial difference:
Comparing social relations in urban settings around the Mediterranean by Dr. Claire Bullen

From September 2021, I begin the first phase of a cross-Mediterranean comparative study of urban change, in Marseille, France. This will involve carrying out ethnographic research (including participant observation and life history interview, backed up with questionnaires, archive research and photography) along the length of a two-kilometre `street, that stretches back from Marseille’s port, towards relatively prestigious residential neighbourhoods, passing behind a stigmatised urban area, behind Marseille’s central station.
    Since the mid-1990s one end of this street, the end closest to Marseille’s docks, has been transformed into a Central Business District (CBD), labelled the Euroméditerranée Urban Development; with huge amounts of French government and European Union funding making this possible. Here, the urban landscape is marked by modern offices, international hotel chains, major cultural venues and gated apartment blocks. Around the other end of the street, former rundown properties built for Marseille’s 19th century bourgeoisie have gradually been ‘gentrified’ a result of municipal policies and the investment of Marseille’s growing 'creative classes'. The middle stretch of the street is generally described as segregated and impoverished; in this part of the street, Maghreb Arabic rivals French on the pavements.
    The aim of this research is to investigate the transforming composition, structure and relationality of social networks of urban dwellers along this highly contrastive street in Marseille, to gain greater understandings about how socio-spatial difference is produced, represented and experienced in unequal relations of power.
    ‘The street' has a long history within urban studies. Streets often serve as sites for micro-sociological analyses of urban socialities, from civility and solidarity to fear and violence (Anderson 1999; Roulleau-Berger 2004, Whyte 1943), or as windows onto ‘urban cultures’ (Geschke 2009; Hohm 1997). Given that by their nature streets connect and intersect different social spaces and scales (Roncayolo 1996), they are excellent starting points from where to analyse the complexity of city life in ways that avoid relying on official modes of carving up the city (administrative boundaries, housing tenure, census data and socio-economic profiling), allowing greater sensitivity to local place and meaning-making processes (c.f. Fournier and Mazzela 2004; Miller 2005; Hall 2015).
    Along this street, I will explore various social networks using semi-structured interviews, life-history interviews and participant observation. I draw here on the social network approach developed by the ‘Manchester School of Social Anthropology (Evens and Handelman 2006). This allows me to tease out linkages that connect people who may not be linked by concepts such as neighbourhood, kinship, class or ethnicity, whilst examining diverse and shifting statuses and modes of incorporation of individuals across local, national and transnational social fields (friendship ties, associations and so forth) (Nieswand 2012).
    The challenge of urban ethnography is always to move from micro-level interactions to macro-level processes and structures. In this project, the notion of the ‘Mediterranean’ is deployed as an analytical prism that enables me to introduce street-level exchanges into the same frame as city-wide, national, transnational and global political, economic, social and cultural relations of power.
    In everyday usage, the word Mediterranean may be seen as simply a means to refer to a place’s geographical position in relation to the body of water between Europe, Africa and Asia. Yet, the term also evokes many social or cultural meanings and values, both positive - for example, when seen as representing as a form of cross-border openness and forms of cosmopolitanism - or negative, such as when it might be used to refer to ‘too much immigration’, and/or chaos, degradation and 'otherness' (elhariry and Talbayev 2018). Importantly, dominant understandings of what and where the Mediterranean is, and what values are associated with Mediterranean people and places have been historically shaped by European colonisation and on-going unequal ‘north/south’ relations of power. However, more recent critical thinking explores the Mediterranean as an idea and a place from where to decenter and to offer 'alternatives' to Eurocentric and racialised narratives about the region (Bermant 2017; Giaccaria and Minca 2011; Proglio 2018).  
    In Marseille, both negative and positive ideas of the Mediterranean are associated with the street I will be studying. As I carry out this research, I will take special note of how the meaning and value of the Mediterranean blurs in and out of focus across the social networks that are studied. My argument is that the equivocal nature of the term, its historically-contingent social geographies and its contemporary relevance can make thinking about the power dynamics shaping urban relations in Marseille very productive.
In a second phase of this project imagined for 2023-26, a similar study will be carried out in a city located on the southern Mediterranean shore, in the Maghreb. The purpose of bringing a ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ ‘Mediterranean city’ into the same framework is to challenge binary understandings of Africa/Europe, south/north, (post)colonised/coloniser, barbaric/civilised, etc. and develop an innovative comparative and relational methodological framework that can add to theorisations of urban social change around the Mediterranean Sea, and elsewhere around the world.

Research Project: Occupational Recognition in the Context of the Corona Pandemic

by: Axel Babst and Dr. Volker Lang

During the Corona pandemic, the keyword "systemic relevance" was used by the German government to categorize occupational groups - and on this basis to issue exemptions and restrictions - and to initiate social debates on the significance of these occupations. Almost one and a half years after the introduction of the first measures of infection control against the spread of the COVID 19 virus in Germany, the question arises to what extent the distinctions based on the criterion of "systemic relevance" influenced the perceptions and attitudes of various occupational groups differently.
Our research project "Occupational Recognition in the Context of the Corona Pandemic", funded by the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, provides first insights on this issue regarding the perceived burden, occupational recognition, and compliance with and approval of measures of infection control for the German workforce. Data of two online surveys conducted in February and March 2021 show that the criterion of systemic relevance is indeed strongly influences the extent to which different occupational groups currently feel recognized or not and whether they perceived an improvement or a deterioration in their occupational recognition during the pandemic. In particular, the group of so-called "base workers" stands out - employees in activities that are classified as systemic relevant on the one hand and require no or only a very low level of qualification on the other. People in base work occupations report a higher level of stress, but at the same time an improvement in their professional recognition. However, this improved perceived recognition is not accompanied by a perception of corresponding consideration in policy support measures for individual occupational groups in the wake of the Corona pandemic.
How occupational recognition affects compliance with measures of infection control as well as detailed expositions of other key findings can be found in the German version of the results section of the project's website - enjoy reading: https://uni-tuebingen.de/de/197507

‘Legitimate yet Unwanted? Tracing the Localised Pathways of Incorporation of EU Mi-grants in Two German Cities’
Researcher: Dr Polina Manolova

Recent academic debates have revolved around the consensus that EU ‘freedom of movement’ has heralded a migratory system of a new kind, in which transient and circular cross-border mobilities prevail over integration and long-term settlement. Political and media discourses have framed the arrival of Bulgarian and Romanian (EU2) migrants in Western Europe, and Germany in particular, within ‘benefit tourism’ and ‘poverty migration’ categories, emphasising the burden that migrants’ claims to socio-economic insertion can pose on national social protection systems and local infrastructures and resources. This political backlash against freedom of movement has entailed a plethora of regulatory developments for limiting welfare and residence access, which has effectively rendered a significant number of EU2 citizens ‘underserving’, not only of their mobility, but also their right to settle. Even though popular accounts of East European migrants’ socio-economic precarity within Western states proliferate, analyses of the contextual factors of their structural incorporation, are insufficient and mostly situated in ‘classic’ integration paradigms and political science perspectives. In-depth empirical studies that take into account EU migrants’ situated life contexts and cross-border practices of navigating incorporation have not been carried out to date. This project fills this gap by investigating the urban pathways of incorporation of Bulgarian migrants in two proximate but differently sized German cities: Frankfurt am Main and Lollar. It aims to trace, from an emic perspective, the ways in which formally assigned integration modes map onto experiential trajectories of settlement in the three interrelated domains of employment, social welfare and legal administration. To reveal the formal and more covert mechanisms through which mobile EU citizens are rendered into ‘migrants’ with limited rights, the project develops an innovative theoretical perspective in two main directions. First, it builds on ‘classic’ scholarship on structural incorporation and combines it with recent advancements of critical border regime and citizenship studies to conceptualise and analytically unpack the reconfiguration of migration governance on both national and local level. Second, it puts ‘integration’ approaches into dialogue with transnationalism scholarship to account for incorporation as a dynamic and spatially differentiated process. Methodologically, the project adopts a comparative urban framework to capture the significance of ‘locality’ both as a low-level rung in a multi-layered migration governance regime and as a context where migrants access (trans)local networks and support infrastructures. The merit of the comparison between cities of very disparate global significance and power lies in grasping how the relational production of locality affects differently the opportunities and barriers within which migrants negotiate their incorporation.
This project is currently under review by the German Research Foundation under the ‘Eigene Stelle’ Module for Temporary Positions of Principal Investigators. Outputs from preliminary and earlier related research can be found in the JEMS and Movements.

“Who Are We and How Many?” Constructing Categories of Persons in International Statistics
(Hannah Bennani & Marion Müller)

Based on the assumption that categories of persons are not only made visible in international statistics but are also (co)produced, reproduced, and objectified by these statistics, the paper investigates the practices of their statistical construction. To this end, we reconstruct the production of numbers using selected examples such as “age”, “gender”, “ethnicity”, and “disability”. Our results rely on document analyses of international organizations’ political decisions, technical instructions, and manuals. With the help of detailed analysis inspired by the sociology of knowledge, the usually invisible steps of this quantification process are made visible. We show, step by step, how personal characteristics are defined, operationalized, and made observable, and, ultimately, how crosses in questionnaires become globally aggregated numbers. Our analysis exposes the tension between attempts to record people’s diversity and the enormous reduction of complexity through numbers. The specific challenges of establishing universally applicable forms of classification also become apparent. The contribution thus combines questions of categorization and quantification research. It provides innovative insights into how categorical differentiations between people are transformed into numbers and presented as social facts.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11577-021-00747-x

Research project 'Threat and Diversity in Urban Contexts. Ethnically Heterogeneous and Unequal Neighborhoods in the Global South', Dieterich, M. & Martinez, D.

Our research project 'Threat and Diversity in Urban Contexts. Ethnically Heterogeneous and Unequal Neighborhoods in the Global South' is part of the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre 923 Threatened Orders – Societies Under Stress at the University of Tübingen. Headed by Boris Nieswand, and with Damian Martinez and Manuel Dieterich as researchers, the project investigates ethnographically how everyday threat communication affects the relationship between residents in ethnically and socially heterogeneous neighborhoods in Santiago de Chile and Johannesburg respectively. The case selection of the neighborhoods in the two cities was based on the heuristic of urban diversity configurations, developed in the previous phase of the project, which took place in Frankfurt a.M. and Murcia (Spain).
In each of the cities, a configuration of two adjoining neighborhoods is examined, whereby the two areas differ regarding the dimensions 1.) neighborhood morphology, 2.) ethnic composition and 3.) social inequality. In the case of Santiago de Chile, the configuration is formed by the districts Lo Hermida and Peñalolén Alto, and in Johannesburg is formed by Soul City and Mindalore. Lo Hermida was originally an informal settlement emerging from land occupations, just like Soul City. Peñalolén Alto and Mindalore, on the other hand, are middle-class districts with some gated communities. The main questions we want to answer with our ethnographies revolve around the connection between local diversity configuration (perception and acting out of differences), threat communications (what is addressed as a (local) problem) and processes of re-ordering (reactions to the thematized threats). Through our transnational project framework and the resulting opportunities for juxtaposition, we aim to gain deeper insights regarding the following questions:  
1.) What role do differences in the local diversity configuration of neighborhoods play? In Santiago de Chile, for example, the categorization of class is central due to historical developments (Pinochet dictatorship and 'cradle' of neoliberalism) in contrast to 'race' as a main differentiation in Johannesburg with historical roots in the apartheid regime. However, these categorizations are not automatically the situationally relevant ones, which is why we try to work out the categorical boundary drawing processes that accompany each for different threats.
2.) To what extent are differences between threat topoi relevant for re-ordering? Depending on whether the threat communication refers, for example, to the shift in power relations between established and newcomers in the neighborhood, to the threat to life, body and property through crime or natural disasters, or to the inadequate provision of infrastructure such as roads, sewage, water, electricity, etc. by the state, different reactions can be found.  In interaction with specific threat diagnoses and response reactions, different categories of difference become relevant. Therefore, the different examined threats initiate situational shifts in the local diversity configuration. This is where the third question comes in:
3.) What is the effect on re-ordering of different relationships of state penetration or informalization or privatization of regulatory functions? In the neighborhoods, for example, there are attempts at self-help in the form of neighborhood watches against crime, soup kitchens against hunger and poverty or neighborhood committees for discussion and decision-making. On the other hand, there are also criticisms of state neglect in the form of protests, petitions or the formation of interest groups such as parties.

The project “Gender Differences in Family Transitions. Ethnographic Analyses of Becoming a Parent, Separation and Moving Out of the Child” is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Just as its predecessor, it is a collaboration of the Universities of Tübingen (Marion Müller, Marie-Kristin Döbler) and Giessen (Nicole Zillien, Julia Gerstewitz). While the first funding period concentrated on the transition to parenthood, we now turn to families’ dissolution in case of separation or divorce and to the ‘empty nest’, i.e., when the children have moved out. These three transitions are interpreted as liminal phases characterized by the loss of characteristics of the previous ‘state’, and the lack of future/new properties or even uncertainty about which properties these will be at all. With this we follow anthropological initiation and ritual theory as well as sociological life-course research family-biographical transitions which are supposed to show a particular necessity for change. Beyond this, we believe that liminal phases function as crystallization points for (re-)negotiations of those people involved, and as magnifying glass for researchers. Thus, we assume that focussing on them sheds light on the questions why gender differences remain the persistent principle of ordering family life, justifying and legitimizing, motivating and grounding different attributions and practices of female and male parenthood.
Amending so far mainly macro-sociologically oriented life course research, we examine respective processes with a focus on the micro level. We investigate how the family transition events and their consequences are experienced, enacted and perhaps (re-)negotiated on a day to day base by concrete individuals in physical co-presence, discussed in mediated communication via internet or mass media. For doing so, we conduct (online-)ethnographies and hermeneutically analyse a broad set of material: observations of birth preparation courses and family court hearings; narrative interviews with parents who split up or whose children have left home; internet forums and advice books dealing with pregnancy, birth, separation/divorce and the transition in the so-called ‘empty nest’. Our aim is to determine similarities and differences across the material, but above all, to take a comparative look at the various transitions in the life course. We are especially interested in gender-differentiated attributions and practices in relation to: (1) division of care and employment, (2) parent-child relationship and the child’s well-being, (3) patterns of legitimation of parental gender differences, and (4) the role of the body.

Babst Axel, Gehrig Franziska, Prof. Dr. Groß Martin, Hofmann Elias, Dr. Lang Volker & Schuler Gabriel: New Project at the Chair of Macro-Sociology

What measures are necessary to fight the corona virus and which of them are accepted by the population? Politicians face this question during the winter months of the pandemic. The project "Professional Recognition in the Context of the Corona Pandemic", which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, pursues two objectives to approach the second part of this fundamental question. First, it will examine how recognition of one's own professional activity is perceived in different occupational groups - especially in so-called "systemically relevant professions" - and whether the perceived recognition has changed during the pandemic. Secondly, the project will investigate how socially accepted or burdensome the measures are. Do deficits in perceived recognition lead to reduced acceptance of existing measures? Two quantitative online surveys will be conducted to discuss these questions. The sample consists of at least 3,000 respondents per survey. These are employed and also non-employed persons who lost their jobs immediately before the first contact restrictions in March. In addition to the perceived professional recognition and compliance with infection control measures, information on the socio-economic position, personality traits and political attitudes of the respondents is collected.

Interested readers are invited to take a look at the website of the project.

Moser Sebastian J. & Schlechtriemen Tobias (2020): Social figures of the corona pandemic. Ein Aufschlag, in: KWI-Blog, 16.11.2020, DOI: https://doi.org/10.37189/kwi-blog/20201116-0900

The corona pandemic and the measures associated with it have fundamentally changed people's everyday lives worldwide. It is not yet possible to predict how long this will continue; we are in an uncertain interim period. In such times, social figures enter the social stage. In a figurative form, they embody the social experiences and problems that characterize the everyday handling of the pandemic and enable us as a society to reach an understanding about it.Patient 0, "hoarders", virologists, governors as father figures or mask deniers - these are the figures that are depicted on the blog of the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen. They are interesting because of their social aspect that is condensed in the stories of these human figures. With their socio-figurative sketches, cultural scientists of various disciplinary backgrounds open up a space for experimentation, also with regard to writing styles and forms of description.Click for more information.

Martin Groß (Universität Tübingen), Stefan Stuth (Universität Köln) and Johannes Giesecke (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)

Occupational Closure and Wage Inequality: How Occupational Closure Effects Vary Between Workers

Occupational closure continuously establishes, contests, or reinforces institutional boundaries around occupations. Occupational closure thereby interferes with wage-setting processes in the labor market. Recent research shows a substantial impact of occupational closure on wage determination processes in Germany. However, research on occupational closure is based on the assumption that all incumbents of an occupation benefit in the same way. We challenge this assumption by showing that occupational closure works differently for different workers. Using the 2006 sample of the German Structure of Earnings Survey, we distinguish nine worker profiles (three educational groups crossed with three career stages). For each of these profiles we investigate the effects of five closure sources (credentialism, standardization, licensure, representation by occupational associations, and unionization) on the expected mean wages of occupations, employing a two-step multilevel regression model. Our results show that occupational closure does indeed differ between workers. We can show that closure plays out differently throughout employees’ careers. For example, representation through occupational associations pays off the most as employees’ careers advance. Closure sources are unequally distributed across occupations and benefit employees with tertiary degrees more than employees with vocational qualifications. Credentialism also yields the largest advantages for workers with tertiary degrees regarding wage rents. However, our analyses also point to complex interactions between credentialism and standardization, demanding further research, to investigate the interplay between individual worker characteristics and the various sources of occupational closure.

Link

Weber, Hannes, Schwenzer, Marc & Hillmert, Steffen (2020):
Homophily in the formation and development of learning networks among university students. Network Science, 2020. DOI: 10.1017/nws.2020.10

Students’ personal learning networks can be a valuable resource of success in higher education: they offer opportunities for academic and personal support and provide sources of information related to exams or homework. While friendship networks among students have been extensively studied, much less is known about the formation and evolution of learning ties. We study the determinants of learning networks using a specific panel study among university students in their first and second year of study. All students were enrolled in the same degree course and provided information on acquaintances and learning partners from a complete list of their fellow students. A long-standing question in social network analysis has been whether the tendency of individuals with similar characteristics to form ties is a result of preferences (“choice homophily”) or rather selective opportunities (“induced homophily”). We expect a latent preference for homophilic learning partnerships with regard to attributes such as gender, ability, and social origin. We estimate recently developed temporal exponential random graph models (TERGM) to control for previous network structure and study changes in learning ties among students. The results show that especially for males, same-gender partnerships are preferred over heterogeneous ties, while chances for tie formation decrease with the difference in academic ability among students. Social origin is a significant factor in the cross-sectional exploration but does appear to be less important in the formation of new (strong) partnerships during the course of studies.

Full text: doi.org/10.1017/nws.2020.10

Waiting: Taking Care of the present

No. 9 of the Revue française d’éthique appliquée, edited by Sebastian J. Moser and Daniel Dreuil

Our present is characterized by acceleration and the compulsion to act immediately. Against these imperatives, this edition of the Revue française d’éthique appliquée invites us to think about waiting, hesitation and pausing as an ethical resource. Waiting, a temporal experience of everyday life, is sometimes characterized by hope and even the expected happiness of the expected event. At the same time, however, there is also uncertainty and anxiety. These two dimensions of heteronomy range from discomfort to extreme fear. People who are waiting for a doctor's diagnosis after an examination, residents of care houses or asylum seekers who are waiting for their status to be legalized are just a few examples of the state of uncertainty that waiting puts us in. Waiting is a moral experience: it braces our practical relationship with the world by hindering our ability to make autonomous decisions. As a result, the question arises of how we can take care of waiting.

Available here in French

*** französische Version ***

En attente: Prendre soin du présent

No. 9 de la Revue française d’éthique appliquée, coordonné par Sebastian J. Moser et Daniel Dreuil 

Face à l’impératif de la vitesse et de l’action immédiate de notre époque, ce numéro propose de réfléchir sur l’attente comme ressource éthique. L’attente, expérience temporelle de la vie quotidienne, se teinte parfois d’espérance et même du bonheur anticipé de l’événement attendu mais peut être chargée d’incertitude et d’appréhension. Ces deux dimensions d’hétéronomie vont de l’inconfort jusqu’à l’extrême angoisse, celle des personnes engagées dans un parcours d’examens en vue d’un diagnostic, celle des demandeurs d'asile dans l'attente d'un refuge, etc. L’attente est bien une expérience morale: elle met entre parenthèses notre rapport pratique au monde en entravant l’activité libre. Dès lors, comment prendre soin de l’attente?

Disponible ici en française

Project: “Making up people” in world society: analyzing the institutionalization of global social categories” founded by the German Research Foundation

Project team: Prof. Dr. Marion Müller, Dr. Hannah Bennani, Annelen Fritz MA, Leandro Raszkewicz MA, Sophia Falter, Mona Haddada

Duration: 1.05.2020-30.04.2023

Our new project starts with the observation that world society is regularly described in terms of "diversity." From the perspective of a sociology of knowledge, we study the construction and institutionalization of global categories of persons like "women," "people with disabilities" or "indigenous peoples" in the context of international politics, but also take into account less successful cases like "poor people."

We consider global categories as significant elements of world society's structures and as a mechanism of globalization: By identifying people as members of the same kind, a global realm of observation evolves. While differences between categories become apparent, multiple distinctions within categories seem less relevant. As soon as the categories institutionalize as legitimate universal distinctions, legal and political expectations evolve around them that may also influence national societies. Based on these assumptions, we study institutionalization processes and factors that favor (or hinder) the establishment of global categories of persons. How have they been established as significant modes of global sense-making, and how do they solidify (or not)? Who are relevant actors involved in these processes, and which mechanisms induce the institutionalization and globalization of these categories? Are there typical conditions for their success or failure?

We will reconstruct and compare the processes of institutionalization and globalization on the basis of seven cases: "sex/gender", "race", "refugees/migrants", "people with disabilities", "indigenous people(s)", "poor people" and "LGBTI people".  To reflect the complexity of the cases, we combine different sources and methods: 1) document analysis of selected materials by relevant national and international organizations, 2) guided interviews with experts and contemporary witnesses; and 3) ethnographic explorations in the context of the United Nations and social movements.

The project is innovative in several ways: While the study of "human differentiation" (Hirschauer) has mainly focused on national or local processes, the project adds a global perspective. At the same time, it systematically uses the insights of the sociology of categorization in the context of world society research. By adopting an interaction theory's perspective in examining the setting up of global categories, the project focuses on micro-level processes mostly ignored by world society research.

see also

Anthology: “Observing and comparing globally. Sociological world society studies”

Authors: Hannah Bennani (ed.), Martin Bühler (ed.), Sophia Cramer (ed.), Andrea Glauser (ed.)

From the collection World Society Studies

Abstract:

Whether it be artist rankings, grain classifications or the recording of forced labor - practices of global observation and comparison are now indispensable in the context of world society. But how did such practices evolve? How are comparisons communicated and with what consequences? The contributions in this volume provide detailed insights into the multifaceted interplay of comparisons and world society.

Link to publication

The just gender pay gap in Germany revisited: The male breadwinner model and regional differences in gender-specific role ascriptions

Prof. Dr. Martin Groß

Despite recent advances, women still earn less than men, and this gap is considerable. Moreover, even after accounting for differences in education, occupation, experience and performance, many people think that this gap is justified, which leads to a so-called just gender pay gap (JGPG). Research thus far has not been able to explain this JGPG. In a paper published in Research on Social Stratification and Mobility, Volker Lang and Martin Groß use a factorial survey experiment conducted with a population-representative sample in Germany (SOEP-Pretest 2008, 1066 persons, 26,650 vignette ratings) to test if the male breadwinner model (MBM) – the belief that fathers should be gainfully employed to provide for the material needs of their family while mothers attend to the unpaid family work – can account for this JGPG. Based on the MBM explanation, they expect that the JGPG is larger if there are children in a family. To account for the multistep rating process of the factorial survey in the SOEP-Pretest 2008, they develop and implement a new, highly flexible factorial survey model: the generalized Craggit model. The results clearly indicate that the MBM is a critical factor driving the JGPG in Germany. While respondents think that childless women and men should be paid equally, they consider it just if men with children earn approximately 8 % more than women with children or childless persons earn. Moreover, the analyses based on the generalized Craggit model demonstrate a lower JGPG and less relevance of the MBM in the eastern federal states than in the western federal states.

From Children to Parents: The Role of Performance Shifts In Private Tutoring Enrollment By Social Origins. The South Korean Case.

Dr. Laia Sanchez Guerrero

Existing research recognises the critical role played by parents in the educational success of their children. Yet, little attention has been paid to how children performance shifts may alter parents’ educational strategies and the investments they make in education. In a new study published in Research on Social Stratification and Mobility, Laia Sánchez Guerrero investigates whether changes in school performance alter the investments that parents make in private tutoring, and whether these performance shifts are weighted unequally by parents of different social origins. Finally, the article also analyses to what extent investment in private education boosts children’s educational outcomes.

The empirical analysis is based on the junior high school sample of the Korean Youth Panel Survey. Based on a sample of 2,209 teenagers, the author applies a Dynamic Random Effects Probit model to disentangle whether achievement shifts affect parents’ educational decisions and how these decisions may change educational outcomes. The results suggest that patterns of achievement have more weight in the decision-making process of disadvantaged parents. If disadvantaged children fail just once, parents are likely to retrieve their investment. There are, per contra, no substantial differences in investment among the privileged due to achievement shifts. The results also suggest that private education investment tends to have a positive effect on children’s achievement, but this positive effect differs by social origins. More precisely, it appears to be more beneficial for privileged students than it is for disadvantaged ones. Perhaps due to differences in the quality of private education received.

Early Education and Care Quality: Does it Matter for Maternal Working Hours?
Previous research indicates that the effects of attending childcare institutions on children’s wellbeing depend on the quality of the interactions and the learning environment in these institutions. To-date, consequences of the childcare quality for mothers’ employment have received much less attention in the literature, which has focused on the availability and cost of childcare. In a new study published in Social Science Research, Pia Schober and Juliane Stahl investigate whether mothers whose children enter childcare centers of higher quality are more likely to increase their working hours over the following years. They suggest that higher-quality care, e.g. in terms of child-teacher-ratio and frequent communication, is likely to foster trust between parents and teachers and promote more individualized care. This may facilitate a faster labor market re-entry of mothers and an extension of working hours.
For the empirical analysis, the link the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Study with the new  K2iD-SOEP extension study, in which the authors collected quality information from childcare centers across Germany. Based on a sample of 556 mothers of 628 children, the authors applied change score models with entropy balancing to account for differences in a rich set of observable characteristics of families and childcare centers. The findings show that higher levels of quality with respect to child-teacher-ratio and partly also activities promoting child learning and offered services for parents are associated with greater increases in working hours for mothers. Group size and equipment did not seem to play a role. From a policy perspective, these results provide evidence that investments in childcare quality do not only benefit child development but may also facilitate the postnatal labor market participation of mothers.