Social Inequality and Diversity of Families Working Report (April 2010)

• Autor(a) principal: Wall, Karin
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Outros Autores: Leitão, Mafalda, Ramos, Vasco
• Tipo de documento: Relatório
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/4406
• topic: Social inequalities and families; Families and family violence in Europe; Families and migration; Families and poverty

In this state‐of‐art report we focus on some of the more relevant issues from the perspective of social inequality and families within and across European societies. We begin by addressing the three main topics included in this existential field by the Family Platform Project: migration, poverty, family violence. Additionally, we will look at two key issues which are important in contextualizing and discussing the above‐mentioned topics. First, we will summarize recent trends in social inequality in European societies. Secondly, we will review some of existing research on the relationship between social inequalities and families, by examining the impact of social inequality on family forms and dynamics as well as the transmission and reproduction of inequalities within families. Social inequality shapes family life, but families and their members must also be seen as actors in the system of inequality (transmitting inequalities to subsequent generations, reproducing them within the home and through their networks, and resisting the effects of inequality). Research review in this existential field was carried out separately on each of the abovementioned topics. Migration, poverty and family violence are large and autonomous fields of research which do not have common theoretical and methodological underpinnings or empirical data sets. For this report it was therefore important to grasp the major trends and findings within each research topic before moving on to broader conclusions on research into social inequalities and diversity of families in Europe.