Economic crisis, human values and attitudes towards immigrants

Recent decades have seen some European countries experiencing a new wave of migratory rates that have sustained economic growth and simultaneously contributed to changes in the pattems of customs, life styles, values and religions. Alongside this new European setting, ambivalent positions in the attitude domain have emerged. This occurs because in contemporary democratic societies people are embedded within cultural environments that disseminate a social discourse stressing that good people are egalitarian and non-discriminatory.

Waiting for Godot? Welfare Attitudes in Portugal Before and After the Financial Crisis

Do attitudes towards the welfare state change in response to economic crises? Addressing this question is sometimes difficult because of the lack of longitudinal data. This article deals with this empirical challenge using survey data from the 2008 European Social Survey and from our own follow-up survey of Spring 2013 to track welfare attitudes at the brink and at the peak of the socio-economic crisis in one of the hardest hit countries: Portugal. The literature on social policy preferences predicts an increased polarization in opinions towards the welfare state between different groups within society – in particular between labour market insiders and outsiders. However the prediction has scarcely been tested empirically. A notoriously dualized country, Portugal provides a critical setting in which to test this hypothesis. The results show attitudinal change and this varies according to labour market vulnerability. However, we observe no polarisation and advance alternative explanations for why this is so.

Mercado, formação e sucesso: actores e bailarinos entre persistência e desilusão

A tríade arte, formação e mercado tem sido amplamente discutida por sociólogos e economistas (Towse 1993, 2006; Menger 1997, 2009; Throsby 1996, 2006; Benhamou 2000; Santos et al. 2003, Ferreira 2003), utilizada nos discursos de agentes e decisores políticos e ainda nos estudos que avaliam as iniciativas públicas e privadas desenhadas para o sector cultural e criativo, a nível nacional (Mateus 2010) e supranacional (Relatório da UNESCO 2010). O crescente interesse pela relação entre arte, formação e inserção dos indivíduos no mercado de trabalho artístico parece estar relacionado com uma questão central das sociedades contemporâneas para a qual ainda não houve a devida resposta: qual é o papel assumido pelos vários aspectos da formação que os indivíduos recebem ao longo da sua vida na ligação bem-sucedida com a sua profissão e o mercado de trabalho artístico?