“The structural constraints imposed by hostile states’ anti-immigration and anti-integration attitudes significantly limit migrants’ options for coping with everyday life,” our researchers, Zsuzsanna Arendas and Vera Messing, and their co-authors write in their article in Social Sciences.

Inequalities and Democracy
Research profile
The workgroup explores contemporary politics of inequality in Europe and beyond. We examine political and policy formations that address and shape inequality mechanisms and social hierarchies based on gender, class, ethnicity, race, ability, and human mobility and their intersections. Research in the workgroup pursues case based as well as comparative inquiries that connect these wider equality, social justice, and social policy agendas with outstanding democracy, de- and re-democratization puzzles. Research addresses among others:
- old and new agendas in human rights based emancipatory struggles in times of crisis and crisis management;
- the challenges and potentials of civil society participation in facilitating more inclusive democratic politics;
- the (re)production of inequalities and social exclusion in authoritarian and de-democratizing regimes;
- the emergence of new forms of social solidarity in urban, domestic, and transnational contexts in times of democratic crisis.
A wide range of methodological approaches are applied and combined including qualitative, interpretive, ethnographic, participatory, as well as quantitative, bigdata based and mixed methods.
The workgroup researchers possess contextual knowledge and have access to relevant scholarly networks in Latin America, the Middle East, Turkey, and India in addition to our deep familiarity with different parts of Europe, Central and South-East Europe, and select post-Soviet states and societies.
Research agendas for 2022/23
During academic year 2022/23, the workgroup will devote specific attention to linkages between the politics of socio-economic and distributive inequalities, their intersections with other social inequality grounds, and the contestation of democracy. This will include:
- strategic profiling of the already accumulated knowledge on social inequalities enacted through gender, ethnic, racial, ability and human mobility based social hierarchies and political mechanisms. To this end, we are organizing academic discussions and events to unpack the nexus of socio-economic inequalities and political polarization, spatial processes of distributive struggles and exclusions intersecting with gender, ethnic, racial, ability and mobility based hierarchies;
- scholarly exchanges with other workgroups of the Democracy Institute. Cooperation is explored with the De(re)democratization WG in connection to the two new Horizon Europe funded democracy research projects (AUTHLIB, CCINDLE). Cooperation is ongoing with the History WG in regard to history of ideas on social justice and inclusive politics, avenues of democratization through participation, legal struggles for empowerment and disempowerment of selected social groups, among other topics.
Publications by research group members (2021-22)
Publications by research group members (2020-21)
Researchers
Andrea Krizsan | Lead Researcher / Senior Research Fellow / CEU Professor |
Taraf Abu Hamdan | Research Assistant |
Zsuzsanna Arendas | Research Affiliate |
Abel Beremenyi | Research Affiliate |
Andrew Cartwright | Research Fellow / CEU Associate Professor |
Cansu Civelek | Post-doctoral Fellow |
Cristina Corduneanu-Huci | CEU Research Affiliate / CEU Associate Professor |
Anil Duman | CEU Research Affiliate / CEU Associate Professor |
Lilla Farkas | Research Affiliate |
Olena Fedyuk | Research Affiliate |
Anna Fejos | Junior Research Affiliate |
Dorottya Fekete | Research Assistant |
Roland Ferkovics | Policy Officer |
Alberto Fierro | OSUN Post-doctoral Fellow |
Eva Fodor | CEU Research Affiliate / CEU Professor / CEU Pro-Rector |
Adrienn Gyory | Post-doctoral Fellow |
Marek Hojsik | Policy Officer |
Agnes Kende | Research Fellow |
Inna Melnykovska | CEU Research Affiliate / CEU Assistant Professor |
Vera Messing | Research Fellow |
Anand Murugesan | CEU Research Affiliate / CEU Assistant Professor |
Kerem Gabriel Oktem | Research Fellow |
Gabor Petri | OSUN Post-doctoral Fellow |
Laura Rahm | Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow |
Dorottya Redai | Research Affiliate |
Leyla Safta-Zecheria | Research Affiliate |
Mirjam Sagi | Post-doctoral Fellow |
Eva Schwab | OSUN Post-doctoral Fellow |
Bernadett Sebaly | Junior Research Affiliate |
Julia Szalai | Senior Research Affiliate / CEU Professor |
Dorottya Szikra | Research Fellow |
Georgiana Turculet | Research Affiliate |
Violetta Zentai | Research Fellow / CEU Associate Professor |
Projects
News
Critically engaging with post-transition social struggles is a way of expanding our political imagination and a necessary step towards creating an attractive vision of the future, our Junior Research Affiliate Bernadett Sebaly and Eva Tessza Udvarhelyi (School of Public Life) write in their article on hvg.hu.
“It's tempting to see misogyny merely as a deviant trait of individual leaders. However, misogyny is a more general phenomenon in autocratizing regimes,” Andrea Krizsan, lead researcher of our Inequalities and Democracy Workgroup and Conny Roggeband write in their post on The Loop.
Strange and unconventional benefits do not support the needy, and social policy instruments are not only used for social policy purposes, our Research Fellow Dorottya Szikra said to Qubit.
“The entire public image of Roma is based on misconceptions,” Roland Ferkovics, Co-Manager and Project Officer of our Roma Civil Monitor project said in an interview with Times Higher Education.
Audiovisuals
In this interview with New Sound Level, our Research Affiliate Georgiana Turculet talks about the launch of her documentary.
No child is protected from violence at school or domestic abuse by the so-called child protection law in Hungary our Research Affiliate Dorottya Redai argues in a video with Qubit.hu.
Did you miss this book launch with Eva Fodor (Pro-Rector for Foresight and Analysis, CEU), Geeta Ludhra (Brunel University London / Dadima's CIC), Maria Tsouroufli (co-editor / Brunel University London), Dorottya Redai (co-editor / Research Affiliate, CEU Democracy Institute), Areta Sobieraj (co-author / Oxfam Italy)? Watch it now!
Dorottya Redai talks about "Fairyland is for Everyone," a volume containing fairy tales by contemporary authors with diverse characters from various marginalized or disadvantaged groups.
An animated film about the systemic racism against the Roma in Hungary, written by Visiting Researcher Agnes Kende puts the social exclusion of the Roma people in historical context.