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My research interests bridge the intersection of spatial mobilities, social networks, family and intimate life. Using mainly social survey methods, social network analysis and sequence analysis, my work advances new ways of studying how physical distance and mobility behaviours, such as travelling, commuting, moving or using digital mobile technologies, relate to family relationships and family networks.

My substantive research focuses on spatial mobility, social networks, family and intimate life. I have a keen interest in studying the spatiality of social networks and how spatial distance and mobility behaviours relate to individuals’ social and professional integration over the life course.

Tommaso Vitale (Ph.D in Sociology, MA in Political Science, both at the University of Milan) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Sciences Po (Paris, France) where he is the scientific director of the Master "Governing the Large Metropolis" (Sciences Po Urban School), and a researcher at Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée, where he co-coordinates with V. Guiraudon the research program "Cities, borders and (im)mobility". He is also member of the scientific board of Délégation Interministérielle à la Lutte Contre le Racisme, l'Antisémitisme et la Haine anti-LGBT (DILCRAH). and CEE representative in the Board of Institut Convergences Migrations. He is co-editor of the peer-review Journal PArtecipazione e COnflitto. The Open Journal of Sociopolitical Studies. His empirical research has been organised around a main theoretical framework: a Weberian neo-structural sociology, not deterministic but attentive to structural contexts of opportunities at different scales, to explore the relation between social and spatial factors influencing forms of (Weberian) “community action”. Having been trained within a Weberian theoretical framework giving to the city a generative role structuring social, political and economic interactions, his research looks at community action, not as a form of solidarity but as a form of collective action not requiring a common identity. He took inspiration from the Weberian legacy to link structure and action, trying to develop what Italian scholars callled “studi di comunità”, so to say a comparative approach to allow a dialogue between urban, political and economic sociology, as in the main Italian sociological tradition of Pizzorno and Bagnasco, or the last book of the American sociologist Peter Blau. Their Weberian approach to (inter)action and urban structure is not at all irenic, de-historicized, or intrinsically optimist as in many contemporary theories of “opportunities”. This framework irrigates his three research projects: 1) Roma agency, integration and upward social mobility; 2) the political sociology of associations and NGOs in urban societies; 3) the impact of urban social and spatial structure on electoral behaviour.

I am post-doctoral researcher at the Chair of Social Stratification and Social Policy at the Institute of Sociology, Goethe University Frankfurt. In 2017 I obtained a Ph.D. from the School of Social Sciences, University of Trento, for my thesis on Social and Ethnic Stratification in Education in Comparative Perspective. My research interests lay in the field of Social Stratification and Social Mobility, with a specific focus on the educational and occupational inequalities on the basis of individuals’ migration background and social origins. My research is devoted to the understanding of the mechanisms that allow the existence -and the reproduction- of economic and social inequalities, and of the phenomenon of migration and its effects on both the individuals’ life cycles and the social stratification in the countries of destination.

Maarja Vollmer is a doctoral researcher at nccr - on the move (University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland). She has background in sociology and social work and holds a Master’s degree on International Migration and Ethnic Relations from Malmö University in Sweden. Before joining nccr – on the move, she was working for the European Migration Network Estonian National Contact Point. Maarja has formerly carried out national and international research projects within the field of migration, integration, social cohesion and policy evaluation with both quantitative and qualitative approach. Her research interests include migration governance, migration policy formation, securitisation of migration, and citizenship.

Ekaterina Vorobeva is a PhD candidate at the University of Bremen, Germany. Previously, she worked in research projects on forced migration, transnationalism and migrant entrepreneurship in Finland and Malta. She was a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (Germany) in 2022, at the University of Helsinki (Finland) and at Harvard University (USA) in 2023. Ekaterina has published articles in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Migration, Global Networks, and others.

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg. My research focuses on the economics of migration, especially migration motives, assimilation, and migration policies.