Project acronym DEPRIVEDHOODS
Project Socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects
Researcher (PI) Maarten Van Ham
Host Institution (HI) TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary The objective of DEPRIVEDHOODS is to come to a better understanding of the relationship between socio-economic inequality, poverty and neighbourhoods. The spatial concentration of poverty within cities is of great concern to national governments, partly based on a belief in neighbourhood effects: the idea that living in deprived neighbourhoods has an additional negative effect on residents’ life chances over and above the effect of their own characteristics. This belief has contributed to the development of area-based policies designed to introduce a more ‘favourable’ socio-economic mix in deprived neighbourhoods. Despite the persistent belief in neighbourhood effects, there is surprisingly little evidence that living in deprived neighbourhoods really affects individual lives. There is little consensus on the importance of neighbourhood effects, the underlying causal mechanisms, the conditions under which they are important and the most effective policy responses. It is likely that most studies claiming to have found that poor neighbourhoods make people poor(er) only show that poor people live in poor neighbourhoods because they cannot afford to live elsewhere. DEPRIVEDHOODS will break new ground by simultaneously studying neighbourhood sorting over the life course, neighbourhood change, and neighbourhood effects, within one theoretical and analytical framework. This project will be methodologically challenging and will be the first integrated, multi-country research project on neighbourhood effects to use unique geo-referenced longitudinal data from Sweden, United Kingdom, Estonia, and The Netherlands. Special attention will be paid to the operationalization of neighbourhoods and how it affects modelling outcomes. Through its integrated and international approach, DEPRIVEDHOODS will fundamentally advance understandings of the ways in which individual outcomes interact with the neighbourhood, which will ultimately lead to more targeted and effective policy measures.
Summary
The objective of DEPRIVEDHOODS is to come to a better understanding of the relationship between socio-economic inequality, poverty and neighbourhoods. The spatial concentration of poverty within cities is of great concern to national governments, partly based on a belief in neighbourhood effects: the idea that living in deprived neighbourhoods has an additional negative effect on residents’ life chances over and above the effect of their own characteristics. This belief has contributed to the development of area-based policies designed to introduce a more ‘favourable’ socio-economic mix in deprived neighbourhoods. Despite the persistent belief in neighbourhood effects, there is surprisingly little evidence that living in deprived neighbourhoods really affects individual lives. There is little consensus on the importance of neighbourhood effects, the underlying causal mechanisms, the conditions under which they are important and the most effective policy responses. It is likely that most studies claiming to have found that poor neighbourhoods make people poor(er) only show that poor people live in poor neighbourhoods because they cannot afford to live elsewhere. DEPRIVEDHOODS will break new ground by simultaneously studying neighbourhood sorting over the life course, neighbourhood change, and neighbourhood effects, within one theoretical and analytical framework. This project will be methodologically challenging and will be the first integrated, multi-country research project on neighbourhood effects to use unique geo-referenced longitudinal data from Sweden, United Kingdom, Estonia, and The Netherlands. Special attention will be paid to the operationalization of neighbourhoods and how it affects modelling outcomes. Through its integrated and international approach, DEPRIVEDHOODS will fundamentally advance understandings of the ways in which individual outcomes interact with the neighbourhood, which will ultimately lead to more targeted and effective policy measures.
Max ERC Funding
1 996 506 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-08-01, End date: 2019-07-31
Project acronym EUROMIX
Project Regulating mixed intimacies in Europe
Researcher (PI) BERTHA DE HART
Host Institution (HI) STICHTING VU
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2016-COG
Summary This project is a study of the regulation of ‘mixture’(‘interracial’ sex, relationships and marriage) in Europe’s past and present. Informed by critical race and critical mixed race studies, it challenges the common assumption that Europe never had ‘anti-miscegenation’ laws comparable to those in the United States. In exploring if, when, how and why forms of regulation aiming to prevent or restrict ‘interracial mixture’ developed in Europe in certain times and places, the project delivers a vital contribution to our knowledge of the development of racial thinking in Europe. The concept of ‘mixture’ provides an eminently suitable approach to the construction of ‘race’, since ‘mixture’ confuses and destabilizes racialized categories that seem fixed and essentialized in specific times and places, such as ‘black/white’.
The project consist of a historical and a contemporary part. The historical part looks at the regulation of ‘mixture’ in four European countries: France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, in their African colonies, and wartime Europe. The contemporary part explores whether and how, in spite of norms of formal equality and colour-blindness, ‘race’ and ‘monoracial family norms’ still play a part in European law and the lived experiences of ‘interracial’ couples with law in their everyday lives. Through archival research, legal analysis and interviews with modern-day ‘mixed’ couples and families, this approach helps us understand what lawmakers and enforcers believed ‘race’ was, what they believed ‘mixture’ was, how this was translated into legal practices, and how targeted couples responded.
Theoretically, the project delivers a groundbreaking contribution to the genealogy of racial thinking in Europe, especially in addressing the understudied role of law and legal scholarship in the social construction of ‘race’ and ‘mixture’ in a increasingly diverse Europe.
Summary
This project is a study of the regulation of ‘mixture’(‘interracial’ sex, relationships and marriage) in Europe’s past and present. Informed by critical race and critical mixed race studies, it challenges the common assumption that Europe never had ‘anti-miscegenation’ laws comparable to those in the United States. In exploring if, when, how and why forms of regulation aiming to prevent or restrict ‘interracial mixture’ developed in Europe in certain times and places, the project delivers a vital contribution to our knowledge of the development of racial thinking in Europe. The concept of ‘mixture’ provides an eminently suitable approach to the construction of ‘race’, since ‘mixture’ confuses and destabilizes racialized categories that seem fixed and essentialized in specific times and places, such as ‘black/white’.
The project consist of a historical and a contemporary part. The historical part looks at the regulation of ‘mixture’ in four European countries: France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, in their African colonies, and wartime Europe. The contemporary part explores whether and how, in spite of norms of formal equality and colour-blindness, ‘race’ and ‘monoracial family norms’ still play a part in European law and the lived experiences of ‘interracial’ couples with law in their everyday lives. Through archival research, legal analysis and interviews with modern-day ‘mixed’ couples and families, this approach helps us understand what lawmakers and enforcers believed ‘race’ was, what they believed ‘mixture’ was, how this was translated into legal practices, and how targeted couples responded.
Theoretically, the project delivers a groundbreaking contribution to the genealogy of racial thinking in Europe, especially in addressing the understudied role of law and legal scholarship in the social construction of ‘race’ and ‘mixture’ in a increasingly diverse Europe.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 823 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-11-01, End date: 2022-10-31
Project acronym GirlsInScience
Project Building an Evidence-Base for Reducing Gender Bias in Educational Pathways
Researcher (PI) Judi MESMAN
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2016-COG
Summary In 2012, the European Commission launched the campaign Science: It’s a girl thing!, aimed at encouraging women to choose research careers, as they are sorely underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Given that gender disparities in aptitude for specific fields are generally very small, highly gendered skewness in educational choices suggest pathways dictated by stereotypes rather than abilities, leaving valuable STEM talents unused.
Many European countries have invested in boosting girls’ participation in STEM through workshops with girl-oriented science topics, contact with female role models, and information packages. However, the vast majority of these initiatives have not been scientifically evaluated. Further, most programs leave untouched one of the key underlying processes keeping girls from STEM that emerge from the research literature, namely daily socialization reinforcing gender stereotypes in the school and family context.
I aim to fill this gap by developing a video-feedback intervention aimed at reducing teachers’ (largely unconscious) gendered classroom interactions in primary and secondary schools, testing its effectiveness in reducing gender disparities in STEM in a randomized control trial (RCT), and longitudinally investigating salient family processes from infancy to late adolescence to inform parent education programs.
This approach is innovative because it is the first to apply and rigorously test a video-feedback intervention aimed at reducing gendered interactions in schools. Further, the comprehensive scope of the study design is unique because it includes children and adolescents across development in both the school and the family context.
The insights from this study will provide new avenues for both research and practice regarding gender socialization. The project fits seamlessly with my expertise in gender socialization, and experience with longitudinal and RCT projects in schools and families.
Summary
In 2012, the European Commission launched the campaign Science: It’s a girl thing!, aimed at encouraging women to choose research careers, as they are sorely underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Given that gender disparities in aptitude for specific fields are generally very small, highly gendered skewness in educational choices suggest pathways dictated by stereotypes rather than abilities, leaving valuable STEM talents unused.
Many European countries have invested in boosting girls’ participation in STEM through workshops with girl-oriented science topics, contact with female role models, and information packages. However, the vast majority of these initiatives have not been scientifically evaluated. Further, most programs leave untouched one of the key underlying processes keeping girls from STEM that emerge from the research literature, namely daily socialization reinforcing gender stereotypes in the school and family context.
I aim to fill this gap by developing a video-feedback intervention aimed at reducing teachers’ (largely unconscious) gendered classroom interactions in primary and secondary schools, testing its effectiveness in reducing gender disparities in STEM in a randomized control trial (RCT), and longitudinally investigating salient family processes from infancy to late adolescence to inform parent education programs.
This approach is innovative because it is the first to apply and rigorously test a video-feedback intervention aimed at reducing gendered interactions in schools. Further, the comprehensive scope of the study design is unique because it includes children and adolescents across development in both the school and the family context.
The insights from this study will provide new avenues for both research and practice regarding gender socialization. The project fits seamlessly with my expertise in gender socialization, and experience with longitudinal and RCT projects in schools and families.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 342 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-06-01, End date: 2022-05-31
