Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

The challenges of diversity for current societies: Its impact on social capital and well-being through the lens of identity

Objective

Today, widespread availability of transportation together with the globalisation of job markets and changes in current economies has increased the numbers of immigrants in Europe and around the world. Societies are in constant flux, and have become more diverse than ever before. It is thus not surprising to see, within the social sciences (and also in politics and public debate), concern about the impact of these changes for societies. In fact, this increasing concern has escalated to pessimism about the possible effects of diversity and multiculturalism. Robert Putnam (2000) in his book Bowling Alone showed that in diverse communities, people tend to have less trust in neighbours, lower political efficacy, lower levels of voter registration, and are less likely to work on community projects and contribute to charity. Since then, this negative view of diversity has been voiced across multiple social sciences (e.g. economics, sociology, and political science). The present project proposes to evaluate critically these pessimist findings. First, the increasing mobility of people around the world sets a range of challenges that clearly require certain forms of both identity change and development of new identities for individuals and their societies. Although this is a crucial topic underpinning concerns about diversity and multiculturalism, identity processes have been neglected in previous work. The project will adopt a social identity approach to examine when and why diversity has negative implications for societies. Second, it is vital to understand how current policies manage diversity and counteract the decline of social capital. The project will develop analyses of practical benefit to leaders and policy makers responsible for managing the broad range of identity-related challenges faced by Europe and the world today. The stakes here could not be higher. These challenges — and society’s response — can be seen to constitute a defining issue of the 21st century.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MC-IEF - Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)

Coordinator

THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
EU contribution
€ 231 283,20
Address
WELLINGTON SQUARE UNIVERSITY OFFICES
OX1 2JD Oxford
United Kingdom

See on map

Region
South East (England) Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Oxfordshire
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data
My booklet 0 0