LIVES International Research Days 2026

Organisers: Davide Ziino, Marlène Tauch, Meret Lütolf, Leen Vandecasteele, Flavia Fossati
Confirmed speakers: Anna Matysiak (Uni. Warsaw), Anne Solaz (INED, Paris)

Over the past decades, intimate relationships have been increasingly shaped by changing economic roles, gender norms, and welfare institutions. While a large body of research has examined inequalities between households and individuals, growing attention has been paid to how resources, risks, and opportunities are distributed between partners. This thematic panel focuses on within-couple inequalities, examining how partners differ in access to economic resources, labour market opportunities, the distribution of paid and unpaid work, and access to welfare state benefits and transfers. We invite contributions that explore how these inequalities emerge, persist, and evolve across the life course, and how they are shaped by broader institutional and policy contexts, including welfare regimes, family policies, and labour market institutions. Potential topics include relative earnings and partners’ economic resources, the division of paid and unpaid work, poverty, and economic vulnerability, as well as the implications of within-couple inequalities for union dynamics, social stratification, time use, and well-being. We particularly welcome comparative, longitudinal, and policy-relevant research from a range of disciplines, including sociology, social policy, demography, and economics.

Organisers: Laura Silva, Mattia Vacchiano, Jaap Nieuwenheis, Haley McAvay, Agata Troost
Confirmed speakers: Maarten van Ham (Delft Uni. of Technology), Bettina Hünteler (DIW Berlin)

Spatial inequalities - territorial, regional, or neighbourhood differences in the distribution of opportunities and constraints - can have long-lasting consequences for individuals and families. On the one hand, characteristics of these contexts determine access to education, employment, housing, and social support. On the other hand, the environments in which people grow up and live also structure patterns of interaction and socialization. Together, these factors can significantly influence life trajectories from early life onward and contribute to the persistence or reduction of inequalities across generations. We propose three complementary sessions, which jointly aim to enhance our understanding of how spatial inequalities intersect with life-course dynamics and intergenerational processes. In session 1), we focus on the enduring legacy of place, examining long-term and multigenerational effects, and how early exposure to specific contexts shapes later-life outcomes. Session 2) explores the role of mobility and housing in the reproduction of inequalities, considering how residential mobility and housing markets can contribute to spatial stratification between generations. Finally, session 3) investigates the spatial dimension of social networks, analyzing how the geography of family ties, friendships, and broader support networks can inform care arrangements, social support, and opportunities across the life course.
 

Organisers: Achim Ahrens, Mirjam Bächli, Rafael Lalive
Confirmed speakers: Linea Hasager (Uni. Copenhagen), Andreas Steinmayr (Uni. Innsbruck)

Refugees face persistent barriers to labor market integration: even several years after arrival, their employment rates remain substantially below those of non-refugee immigrants and natives with similar skills. These patterns underscore the importance of studying refugee labor market integration as a key dimension of social and economic integration over the life course. This panel brings together researchers studying the mechanisms shaping refugees’ labor market outcomes. It highlights new empirical findings and methodological approaches, with particular attention to job search support and the matching process between refugee job seekers and firms. The panel is motivated in part by a large-scale randomized controlled trial conducted by the organizers. The study evaluates an online job platform that provides refugees with tailored vacancy recommendations and application guidance while also sending candidate suggestions to employers with open positions. Drawing on insights from this and related studies, the panel will feature invited experts in the field to advance understanding of refugee vulnerability and foster scientific exchange on labor market integration.

Submissions should include a full paper draft (preferred) or an extended abstract.

Organisers: Nicky Le Feuvre, Marion Braizaz, Isabelle Zinn, Nathalie Bettina Neeser
Confirmed speakers: Isabel Baumann (ZHAW), Ariane Pailhé (INED, Paris) 

Due to socio-demographic trends, such as delayed parenthood, increased female labour market participation, higher divorce rates and the extension of working lives, the interaction of work and family commitments is increasingly intense in the mid-life phase, potentially creating new forms of vulnerability. The term “midlife collision” has been coined to highlight the increasingly complex overlap between caregiving, health issues and work-related events in middle age. Analysing these mid-life challenges from a gendered perspective requires attention to the differential impact of ageism and of bodily changes that remain largely taboo in the workplace. This panel will focus on mid-life challenges and vulnerabilities, insisting on the overlap of life-domains, and on the diversity of subjective experiences and aspirations, according to the resources and reserves of mid-life individuals, their personal characteristics (e.g. class, gender, sexuality, migration background), organisational environment (e.g. public / private sector, salaried / independent work), employment histories (e.g. career paths and breaks) and family configurations.

Organisers: LIVES Family Dynamics Working Group – Maximilian Reichert, Javier Fernandez Garcia, Naomi Downes, Myriam Girardin, Clémentine Rossier, Laura Bernardi
Confirmed speakers: Martin Kolk (Uni. Stockholm), Rossella Ciccia (Uni. Oxford)

Families are dynamic systems that partly revolve around the exchange and transfer of multiple resources between their members, such as time, money, or emotional regulation. Social policies mediate some of the processes in this system and regulate which resources are transferred when, under which circumstances, and to whom. In effect, this sets prescriptive frameworks for family behavior. Ageing populations, shifting social norms, the rising prevalence of separating and repartnering implies a general increase in family complexity. We want to discuss how different social policies (social security, social investment, fiscal regulation, family or care policies, legal recognition of family ties, or defaults in custodial arrangements) intervene, interact with, and regulate family processes such as social support, union formation or dissolution, or informal caregiving, among others. In this thematic session, we are especially interested in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of family complexity, social policy, and social stratification. Topics may include but are not limited to distributional or heterogeneous outcomes of policies across the life-course, the diversification of family forms, relational arrangements of care, and how these issues relate to social stratification across the life course and the reproduction of inequalities across generations.

Organisers: Anatolia Batruch, Michael Grätz, Daniel Oesch
Confirmed speakers: Carlos Gil Hernández (Uni. Florence), Isabel Raabe (Uni. Zurich)

The study of social stratification examines how positions within the social structure — most notably in the labour market, but also in education — shape people's life chances. This panel brings together researchers from sociology, political science, and psychology to shed new light on how more or less advantageous structural positions influence socio-economic resources, social networks, and attitudes. Our panel aims to foster theoretically grounded empirical work at the population level that deepens our understanding of how social structures generate inequalities across the life course in Western societies. To that end, the panel unites diverse disciplines, approaches, and outcomes, with the goal of allowing participants to make novel connections and gain new ideas. The panel will be structured along the following topics: (i) social stratification and socio-economic outcomes; (ii) social stratification and networks; (iii) social stratification and attitudes.

Organisers: Vladimir Jolidon, Stephanie Steinmetz, Mattia Guarnerio, Jil Zanolin, Thea Rebien, Cornelia Wagner, Oana Ciobanu, Claudine Burton-Jeangros, Stéphane Cullati
Confirmed speakers: Daniel Holman (Uni. Sheffield), Michelle Kelly-Irving (Inserm-Uni. Toulouse)

Intersectionality scholarship has shown how multiple social characteristics, such as gender, ethnicity, migration background and socioeconomic position, jointly shape inequalities across intersecting social positions. Yet it has paid limited attention to how these inequalities unfold over the life course. Conversely, life course research has offered rich insights into transitions, trajectories, and cumulative (dis)advantage, but has only rarely engaged with intersectional stratification. This thematic panel brings together scholars seeking to bridge intersectionality and life course perspectives in order to advance conceptual, empirical and methodological approaches to the study of inequality over time. Contributions will examine intersectional inequalities across domains including education, work, family life, health and healthcare, as well as the ways in which these processes are shaped by institutional and policy contexts. Empirical analyses will draw on quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods approaches, including innovations such as longitudinal intersectional modelling and MAIHDA. By connecting micro-level life course transitions, meso-level organisational dynamics and macro-level institutional structures, the panel advances a richer intersectional life course framework for understanding how inequalities emerge, accumulate and transform across the life course, while highlighting implications for public policy, institutional reform, and social intervention.

Organisers: Anahita Mehrpour, Nicolas Sommet, Adar Hoffman, Charikleia Lampraki
Confirmed speakers: Roxanne de la Sablonnière (Uni. Montreal), Fabian Kratz (LMU Munich)

This one-day panel explores well-being and health across the life course, with particular attention to social determinants (e.g., social identities), life stages and transitions, inequalities, and intervention perspectives. It will bring together contributions examining how social relationships, group memberships, social identity, and broader social contexts shape well-being and health in both protective and adverse ways. Particular attention will be given to critical periods and transitions, and to the ways in which social inequalities structure access to resources, belonging, support, and health. Bringing together perspectives from social psychology, sociology, and public health, the panel will address mechanisms linking social connectedness to outcomes such as psychological well-being, depressive symptoms, health behaviors, and social integration. Contributions may examine the role of social identity and belonging, as well as broader social determinants of well-being and health across key life stages. The panel will also consider how these processes can inform interventions and policies aimed at reducing vulnerability and promoting well-being. By fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, the panel aims to advance research on the social foundations of well-being and health and their relevance for life course and vulnerability research.

Jan Van Bavel is full professor of sociology and demography at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium. Within the Research Group on Social, Political and Population Change (ReSPOND), he studies long term trends in reproductive behaviour in Europe and its connections with global developments such as rising inequality and climate change. In 2019, he held the Antoon Van Dyck Chair at the University of California (UCLA) to teach about population history and in 2018, he was appointed as Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute (Fiesole, Italy). Between 2012 and 2017, as recipient of a Starting Grant from the European Research Council, he studied the implications of the reversal of gender balance in education for family dynamics.  Earlier, from 2005 to 2011, he headed the Interface Demography research unit at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

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Roxane de la Sablonnière is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Montreal. An expert in social psychology, she studies the effects of social change on individuals and communities. In her work, she explores individual cultural identities as well as ethnic and intercultural relations. Her previous research focused on diversity policies, such as multiculturalism, interculturalism, and secularism. She is currently working on an algorithm to model social change and has worked with several groups that have been subjected to profound social change, notably in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, South Africa as well as youth under social protection.

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