Research Fields

In the field of ‘Labour market, welfare state and distribution’, we focus on the dynamic changes in labour markets and welfare states as well as the distributional effects of these changes. Developments such as digitalisation, demographic change and climate change, as well as changing global competitive conditions, are accompanied by changing challenges for welfare state regulation and social security. Socio-demographic groups (e.g. by education, age or gender) are affected by these changes to varying degrees, whereby existing distributional inequalities are reinforced and new ones may arise. We analyse these effects against the background of specific political measures, but also the setting of general framework conditions at national, European and global level.

In the field of ‘Working conditions, competence and subject’, we analyse current forms of work from a subject-oriented perspective. On the one hand, this includes the requirements side, such as questions of necessary qualifications and professional and social competences as well as the further development of professional norms and processes. On the other hand, we look at the workloads and health conditions as well as the subjective demands on work and the strategies of the employees. In doing so, we include a broad spectrum of activities and professions - from industrial to immaterial labour, from simple service work to highly qualified knowledge and creative work, from nursing to teaching professions, from precarious to institutionally secured work.

Current challenges for the organisation of labour and the subjects of labour include the reorganisation of work in the context of ‘new work concepts’ and digitalisation, as well as the challenges posed by socio-ecological change.

The focus area ‘Care, labour and family’ focusses on paid and unpaid work. In particular, we examine the localisation of work in the field of tension between market, state and family. This concerns the division of market labour and (family) care work as well as the gender division of care work. Welfare states set central framework conditions here, whereby a change can be observed in the form of the expansion of care services and family benefits, but also the marketisation of health services and care.

In the focus area ‘Labour, digitalisation and spatial mobility’, we examine upheavals as well as continuities in the organisation and design of work with regard to its spatial and technological dimensions. In the course of the digitalisation of work, understood as an element of a socio-technical development, a fundamental restructuring of the spatial organisation of work can currently be observed, ranging from the expansion of location-flexible and mobile work (including remote work) to technology as an additional player in work processes (including digital personnel procedures, digital care assistants, digital and hybrid qualification procedures) and the redistribution of work within the framework of global labour division structures. At the same time, local and cross-border forms of mobility are changing, including changes in commuter mobility and migration movements.