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Organisation

Citizenship, Equality & Diversity (CED)

Research Group

Lifecycle:1 Oct 2003 →  30 Sep 2018
Organisation profile:The research group focuses on issues of inequality and equality in relation to the diversity characterising our contemporary society, mainly within a political science frame, but also connecting to social and human science more broadly. Our research is driven by a concern for detecting, analysing and understanding mechanisms and causes of inequality and by the question of how to define and promote the equality of social groups in our contemporary society. This central topic brings our different research projects together and is also the common ground for the future research of the group. This said, we are aware of the normative undertone underlying the research agenda and therefore consciously choose to keep the understanding of what should be seen as inequality and what has to be understood by equality open for discussion. Important in our research on inequality and equality is the concept of diversity. Issues of inequality and equality are studied with respect to the socio-demographic diversity characterising society, unpacking the notion of the citizen, and how the lack of recognition of diversity or a specific understanding of diversity (re)produces inequality. Research focuses on both one and more aspects of diversity and how this relates to axes and processes of inequality, whereby particular attention is paid to issues of intersectionality. While the research initially concentrated on issues of gender, the focus has been broadened to other mechanisms of discrimination and exclusion, including LGBT, ethnicity and disability. A last central concept in our work is that of citizenship, embedding the concept of social groups in a relation to the state, its institutions, practices and policies. Citizenship refers to the political and policy dimension in issues of diversity and (in)equality, and the way in which politics and policies (re)produce equality and inequality. The broad lines of current research projects of the group comprise: • diversity and equality in and through processes and stages of political representation • equality and diversity in and through public policies and the underlying processes • equality as a structural component of society
Keywords:INEQUALITY, EQUALITY, GENDER, HANDICAP, LGBT, CITIZENSHIP, DIVERSITY, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Disciplines:Other economics and business, Applied sociology, Citizenship, immigration and political inequality, International and comparative politics, Multilevel governance, National politics, Political behaviour, Political organisations and institutions, Political theory and methodology, Public administration, Other political science