Research Projects at Freie Universität Berlin

Bezahlte Hausarbeit und organisatorische Erfahrung. Die Fälle Uruguay und Paraguay // Paid Domestic Work. Entangled Inequalities and Organizational Experiences. The Cases of Uruguay and Paraguay // Trabajo doméstico remunerado. Desigualdades entrelazadas y organización gremial. Apuntes desde las experiencias uruguaya y paraguaya

Dissertation

Raquel Rojas Scheffer

Institutions: Institute for Latin American Studies
Institute/Seminar: Graduate Programme "Between Spaces. Movements, Actors and Representations of Globalisation"
Field/Area of work: Department of Sociology
Subject group: Law, Economics and Social Sciences
Subject classification: Sociology
Funding: Stipendiat des IGK "Entre Espacios"
End: 2019
Status: Completed
Short description: Paid domestic work has been historically discriminated against, both in law and in practice. It was only within the past ten years that this occupational field started to gain political attention and recognition worldwide. In this respect, many Latin American countries adopted new laws in order to guarantee more rights for domestic workers, and several organizations of the sector have emerged and gotten stronger since then. The research focuses on organizational experiences of paid domestic workers in Uruguay and Paraguay, particularly on the networks that they build with different types of organizations, within and across national borders. Specifically, I am interested in analyzing how the entanglements of different axes and dimensions of inequality that cut across this occupational field shape these networks and their outcomes. The study focuses on organizational experiences in Uruguay and Paraguay, two close but significantly different cases regarding the participation of local actors (trade union confederations, feminist NGOs, migrant organizations, the State, and counterparts) and transnational actors (ILO, UN Women) in the struggle for more rights for the sector.

Bildung und Beschäftigung in Sozial-, Erziehungs- und Pflegeberufen - im Spannungsfeld von Professionalisierung und Prekarisierung. Trendanalysen auf Basis des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP)

Dissertation

Dr. Julia Prausa

Institutions: Education and Psychology
Field/Area of work: Department of Empirical Research in Education
Subject group: Law, Economics and Social Sciences
Subject classification: Pedagogy
End: 2016
Status: Completed
Publications: https://shop.budrich-academic.de/produkt/soziale-berufe-zwischen-professionalisierung-und-prekarisierung/?v=3a52f3c22ed6
Homepage 2: diss.fu-berlin.de

BOARDEQUALITY project - Women in the Boardroom: Institutional and Organizational Approaches to Gender Equality

Research Project

Prof. Dr. Anja Kirsch

Institutions: Business and Economics
Institute/Seminar: Managment-Department
Field/Area of work: Management-Department
Subject group: Law, Economics and Social Sciences
Funding: People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme
Start: 2013
End: 2018
Status: Completed
Staff: Elgen Sauerborn, M.A.
Short description: The key objective of the BOARDEQUALITY project is to develop a better understanding of women’s access and contribution to corporate boards, and to contextualize this understanding using an internationally comparative approach. We draw on institutional and organizational theories to explain the persistent underrepresentation of women in the upper echelons of organizations. The project combines an internationally comparative analysis of quantitative data with in-depth national case studies based on qualitative research. In a first step, by means of a systematic literature review, we develop a detailed research agenda that will allow us to generate new knowledge on women’s access and contributions to boards. Second, we undertake an internationally comparative analysis of the relationship between the representation of women on boards and women in management, as well as between the representation of women on boards and the existence of diversity policies in firms. This analysis shows to what extent increasing women’s representation on boards contributes to gender equality in organizations more generally, thereby illuminating the impact for working women. The third step in this project is a case study of women on supervisory boards in Germany. An in-depth examination of women’s access to boards over time highlights through which paths women have made inroads to the top levels of organizations. Women’s contributions to boards are the key focus of qualitative research interviews with women directors about their experiences and views.
Publications: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.524057.de/16-2.pdf
E-mail: anja.kirsch@fu-berlin.de

Bolivianische Textilarbeiterinnen in Buenos Aires. Aushandlungsprozesse um Mobilität und (Un)Gleichheit im transnationalen Raum der Mode.

Dissertation

Karlotta Bahnsen (WiMi)

Institutions: Institute for Latin American Studies
Institute/Seminar: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Field/Area of work: Cultural and Social Anthropology of Latin America
Subject group: Law, Economics and Social Sciences
Start: 2018
Status: Ongoing
Short description: The dissertation analyzes the situation of migrant workers from Bolivia in the Argentinian fashion industry from an anthropological perspective with a focus on gender relations, taking into account theories of transnationalism and intersectional inequality and employing ethnographical fieldwork with narrative interviews. The situation of migrant garment workers in Buenos Aires is shaped by inequality that displays on local, transnational and global levels. The global garment industry is characterized by especially precarious working condition and tendencies towards subcontracting. Argentina’s garment sector has been shaped by these global tendencies but also by transnational aspects of mobility that link Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru in a ‘transnational space of fashion’. The border-crossing mobility of involved social actors has constructed transnational social networks nourishing the demand for cheap migrant labor for the local fashion production in São Paulo and Buenos Aires. While the precarious working conditions and exploitation within the fashion industry has been emphasized in previous academic research, the ethnographic research at the core of this investigation aims at detecting possibilities of agency as well as social- and spatial mobility within this particular context and across national and imaginary borders. Gender relations are further focused for their relevance in both, migration and work at the “global assembly line” that construct an intersectional scheme of inequality shaping the specific situation of female migrant garment workers from Bolivia in Buenos Aires.

Brasilianische Migrantinnen und afrobrasilianische Religionen in Berlin - transkulturelle Überlegungen zu Gender und Identität

Research Project

Dr. Christiane Pantke

Institutions: Political and Social Sciences
Institute/Seminar: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Subject group: Law, Economics and Social Sciences
Subject classification: Ethnology
Subject classification 2: Gender Studies
Funding: Berliner Programm zur Förderung der Chancengleichheit für Frauen in Forschung und Lehre p.a. Senatsverrwaltung f. Arbeit, Integration u.Frauen (Berlin)
Start: 01.2005
End: 12.2006
Status: Completed

Bridging Environments: United by Food?

Research Project

Prof. Dr. Renata Campos Motta

Institutions: Institute for Latin American Studies
Field/Area of work: Sociology
Subject group: Law, Economics and Social Sciences
Start: 2017
End: 2018
Status: Completed
Short description: Under which conditions does ‘bridging’ occur between the countryside and the urban centers in conflicts over socio-environmental inequalities related to food production relations? What prevents it from happening? There is a significant gap in the literature in political sociology on processes of ‘bridging’ and ‘brokerage’ across sites where problems arise and are addressed, from the local to global scales. When these processes are addressed in the literature, an intersectional analysis is missing. Often, women are attributed a leading role in grassroots mobilization whereas global agents and brokers are mostly associated with dominant masculinities. I address three aspects of the research problem. The first is the different categories of actors along lines of social class, gender and ethnicity who participate in interconnected struggles. The second is the multiple scales in which linkages between rural and urban sites take place, in the context of global food chains, ranging from processes at the local level, to those that reach the national political agenda and cross national borders. The third is the influence of different themes that make bridging either possible or unlikely to happen, including how the different materialities of nature intersect with social mobilizations. Following from the theoretical understanding that bridging conflicts depends on concrete actions from social actors while being challenged by disconnections that exclude places and actors from global chains, I will conduct extended case studies of successful wide coalition-builiding, namely, Wir haben es satt (Germany) and Marcha das Margaridas (Brazil).

Bürgerlich, jüdisch, weiblich. Frauen im Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens (1918–1938)

Dissertation

Dr. Rebekka Denz

Institutions: Political and Social Sciences
Institute/Seminar: Institute for East European Studies
Field/Area of work: History
Subject group: Humanities
Subject classification: History
Status: Completed
Publications: https://neofelis-verlag.de/verlagsprogramm/geschichte/810/buergerlich-juedisch-weiblich

Care, Gender and Green Economy. Forschungsperspektiven und Chancengerechtigkeit nachhaltigen Wirtschaftens (CaGE)

Research Project

Dr. Dörte Segebart

Institutions: Earth Sciences
Institute/Seminar: Institute of Geographical Sciences
Field/Area of work: Department of Human Geography
Subject group: Law, Economics and Social Sciences
Subject classification: Business and Economics
Subject classification 2: Natural and Environmental Sciences
Funding: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
Start: 11/1/2013
End: 31/10/2014
Status: Completed

Children in Between: Disruptions of Transnational Surrogacy in the Time of Covid-19 and its Aftermath

Research Project

Prof. Dr. Anika König (in Vertretung)

Institutions: Political and Social Sciences
Institute/Seminar: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Field/Area of work: Medical Anthropology
Subject group: Law, Economics and Social Sciences
Funding: Volkswagen Stiftung
Start: 2021
End: 2023
Status: Completed

Chinese theatrical Cross—dressing in contemporary Films

Dissertation

Tong Mu

Institutions: Philosophy and Humanities
Field/Area of work: International Research Training Group Interart Studies
Subject group: Humanities
Subject classification: Theatre Studies
Funding: International Research Training Group Interart
Start: 2011
Status: Ongoing

Bildung und Beschäftigung in Sozial-, Erziehungs- und Pflegeberufen - im Spannungsfeld von Professionalisierung und Prekarisierung. Trendanalysen auf Basis des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) arrow_forward

BOARDEQUALITY project - Women in the Boardroom: Institutional and Organizational Approaches to Gender Equality arrow_forward

Bolivianische Textilarbeiterinnen in Buenos Aires. Aushandlungsprozesse um Mobilität und (Un)Gleichheit im transnationalen Raum der Mode. arrow_forward

Brasilianische Migrantinnen und afrobrasilianische Religionen in Berlin - transkulturelle Überlegungen zu Gender und Identität arrow_forward

Bridging Environments: United by Food? arrow_forward

Bürgerlich, jüdisch, weiblich. Frauen im Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens (1918–1938) arrow_forward

Care, Gender and Green Economy. Forschungsperspektiven und Chancengerechtigkeit nachhaltigen Wirtschaftens (CaGE) arrow_forward

Children in Between: Disruptions of Transnational Surrogacy in the Time of Covid-19 and its Aftermath arrow_forward

Chinese theatrical Cross—dressing in contemporary Films arrow_forward

Bildung und Beschäftigung in Sozial-, Erziehungs- und Pflegeberufen - im Spannungsfeld von Professionalisierung und Prekarisierung. Trendanalysen auf Basis des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP)

BOARDEQUALITY project - Women in the Boardroom: Institutional and Organizational Approaches to Gender Equality

Bolivianische Textilarbeiterinnen in Buenos Aires. Aushandlungsprozesse um Mobilität und (Un)Gleichheit im transnationalen Raum der Mode.

Brasilianische Migrantinnen und afrobrasilianische Religionen in Berlin - transkulturelle Überlegungen zu Gender und Identität

Bridging Environments: United by Food?

Bürgerlich, jüdisch, weiblich. Frauen im Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens (1918–1938)

Care, Gender and Green Economy. Forschungsperspektiven und Chancengerechtigkeit nachhaltigen Wirtschaftens (CaGE)

Children in Between: Disruptions of Transnational Surrogacy in the Time of Covid-19 and its Aftermath

Chinese theatrical Cross—dressing in contemporary Films