The University of Essex is an interdisciplinary university with specific focus on Social Sciences. The Department of Sociology encompasses core expertise in the field of migration and its members specialise in a variety of fields related to the subject. The University of Essex is also the home of the UK Data archive which is an internationally acknowledged centre of expertise in the areas of acquiring, curating and providing access to data and curator of the largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities in the United Kingdom.

Coordinator and Principal Investigator of the GEMM Project: Dr. Neli Demireva

The Department of Sociology at Utrecht University has ample experience with the analysis of social and ethnic stratification in the labour market, social networks, and the use of quantitative and experimental research methods. At Utrecht University, the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER) exists to actively encourage, support and promote comparative research in the fields of international migration and ethnic relations within the European context. Both institutes have an excellent track record in academic publishing, acquiring funding for and participating in international research projects.

The New Europe Centre for Regional Studies (NEC) in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, is a private non-profit research institution, registered with the National Statistical Institute. Its main activities are research and consultation in the field of social, political and economic change in the country and the region of South-East Europe. The Centre has conducted quantitative and qualitative studies on the local, regional and European level and has provided expertise to national and European bodies in the field of social policy, business, economics, politics and demography. The Centre has experience in multidisciplinary and comparative research and in policy evaluation studies applying a wide scope of methods such as surveys, focus-group and in-depth interviews, participant observation, case studies, desk research and others.

The University of Milano-Bicocca is a Public University instituted in 1999 and based in Milano offering over 70 different academic programs – at the Bachelor, Master and PhD level – ranging over many scientific fields: Economics and Statistical Sciences, Law, Medicine and Surgery, Psychology, Educational Sciences, Natural Sciences and Sociology. The Department of Sociology and Social Research of Milano-Bicocca [Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale–DSRS] aims at promoting excellence in the empirical analysis of contemporary societies and in the development of social theory, also with attention and recognized expertise in migratory and mobility phenomena. It was classified at top level among the departments of sociology in both the Italian RAE (2001-2203; 2004-2010).

The Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung (WZB) is one of Europe’s largest and most reputed research institutions in the social sciences. It has a strong tradition of participation in, and management of high-quality comparative research, and has in the last five years received more than twenty million euros in research grants from diverse funding institutions, including the EU. Its research aims to link fundamental empirical research to concrete social and policy problems using multi-disciplinary and cross-national comparative approaches, in particular focusing on EU countries and Eastern Europe. The Research Area “Migration and Diversity” includes several research projects that are relevant to the current research proposal, including a pilot study on ethnic labour-market discrimination carried out in 2013-14, and the IPC and ICRI projects gathering cross-national and longitudinal indicators of immigration, integration and citizenship policies.

The University of Oslo is Norway’s largest and oldest institution of higher education. It was founded in 1811 when Norway was still under Danish rule. Today the University of Oslo has approximately 30,000 students and 4,600 employees. Four Nobel Prize winners indicate the quality of the research at the University. The Department of Sociology and Human Geography is part of the Faculty of Social Sciences. It is Norway’s leading educational department for both sociology and human geography, and it pursues research, teaching and dissemination at the highest level.  23 Research fellows (PhD and postdocs) are connected to the institute. The Department offers courses in 39 topics in Sociology and 22 topics in Human Geography. Social inequality is one of the core areas at the Department, and one of the strategic research areas is ethnic inequality, segregation and discrimination in the labor market. Breadth of topics and methods, high quality in the form of outstanding researchers, lecturers and advisors, social relevance and a gender-balanced academic staff characterizes the Department as a research and teaching environment.

The Center for Urban and Regional Sociology (CURS) is a private company for social and marketing research, established in 1990. Since then, CURS has worked with a vast array of clients that require high quality social science and marketing research. These clients include domestic and foreign government agencies, non-governmental organizations and charitable foundations, and private-sector companies. CURS’ research projects fall into four substantive areas and are conducted by the following departments: Public Opinion Polls; Urban and Regional Research, and Local Development; Market Research; Advertising and Audience Research; PIL Readability Tests. Most of CURS’ studies have relied on national samples, which are representative for Romania’s population, ages 15 years and over. CURS uses multistage, random sampling techniques that observe international standards in the field of sampling methodology. Also, CURS is unique among its competitors due to its extensive experience in conducting surveys on large samples, ranging from 13,000 to 37,000 cases. Such large samples allow for more detailed statistical analyses at municipal, county, micro-regional, and regional levels.  CURS also has extensive experience in conducting studies that rely on qualitative methodologies. For instance, during the last 3 years, our experts have conducted 250 focus groups and 400 in-depth interviews on topics such as: the performance of (local and central) public administration; political attitudes and voting preferences; media and cultural consumption; inter-ethnic relations; corruption; the social impact of economic restructuring in coal-mining areas; media’s impact on children and teenagers; civic and political participation in rural communities; international migration; organizational behaviour; cultures and strategies; consumer behaviour; and product testing.

The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) is a public university founded in 1989.  Its main goal is to provide specialised training in Law and Social Sciences and Engineering, as well as becoming a prime European research centre.  UC3M has recently reached the top of the Spanish universities in research activity (Report 2009 of CNEAI-National Commission for Evaluation of Research Activity). Created in 2013, the Department is an interdisciplinary centre that promotes high-impact research and academic excellence in the social sciences (…read more here). The Department is the home of the new Carlos III-Juan March Institute (IC3JM), a centre with mixed funding from the Juan March Foundation and the Carlos III University, which absorbs the faculty, activities, programs, and the library of the former Center for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (CEACS) of the Juan March Institute, one of the most prestigious research centres in Europe.

Nuffield is a graduate college of the University of Oxford specialising in the Social Sciences, particularly Economics, Politics, and Sociology. The College has been, and continues to be, the source of some of the major research developments in social science. These include the British Election Studies and the major programme of research on Social Mobility in Britain. It was the birthplace of the “Oxford School” of Industrial Relations; it pioneered the development of cost benefit analysis for developing countries; and it has made a major contribution to the methodology of econometrics.

The Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam has ample experience with the analysis of social stratification in the labour market, the impact of institutions, and the use of quantitative research methods. At the UvA, the department of Sociology also hosts the Amsterdam Center of Inequality Studies, which explicitly focuses on questions regarding inequality. Furthermore, the sociology department is part of the University’s Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, which has broad expertise in the area of immigration and integration.