Work and life plans of young people in Salzburg (ARLEJUM)
Contact persons at the department: Wolfgang Aschauer, Christopher Etter
The work and life orientations of young people are the subject of controversial debates; a lack of willingness to work and achieve while at the same time having high hedonistic expectations is discussed as well as the socio-ecological transformation potential of a “Generation Greta”. In order to gain a more differentiated understanding, the project was commissioned by the Salzburg Chamber of Labor and qualitative, guideline-based interviews were conducted with Salzburg residents aged between 15 and 29 from all political districts and different social milieus, in which ideas of a good life and a good job, as well as current stress factors, worries about the future and wishes were addressed. The typology developed from the data, which differentiates between five orientation patterns among young people in Salzburg, illustrates the heterogeneous perspectives of young people on work, family, leisure and ideas for the future, which in turn are clearly characterized by social inequality. The results of the study have already been published and presented to a wider audience in the course of two lectures.
Click here for the findings of the study (with Wolfgang Aschauer, Christopher Etter, Claudia Herbst, Laura Wallner, Anna Stadler, Katharina Stiebler, Ines Fingerlos, Sarah Ebner)
Generations and Gender Programme
Contact persons at the department: Claudia Herbst, Brigitte Schels, and Beat Fux (in charge until 2023).
The international Generations and Gender Program (GGP) enables a comprehensive analysis of demographic developments through representative population surveys in panel design. Under the international coordination of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), topics such as fertility, childbearing desires, partnership forms, intergenerational relationships, intra-family division of labor, intergenerational cohesion and labor force participation have been examined in 19 countries.
In Austria, the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) was first conducted with repeat surveys in 2008/09 and 2012/13 and continued in 2024 with a second round of surveys (GGP-II).
Initial results of the survey have been published in the Science-to-Public Report “Families in Austria 2023”, which was produced in collaboration with the University of Salzburg (with Beat Fux, Christopher D. Etter, and Claudia Herbst). Further information is available on the website www.ggp-austria.at and https://www.ggp-i.org/
Short-term rentals in the age of platform capitalism
Contact person at the department: Christian Smigiel
More than a quarter of all overnight stays in the European Union are currently booked as short-term rentals via online platforms (as of 2024). Based on the market power of platforms, short-term rentals have developed into a worldwide mass phenomenon that is changing housing markets globally. House prices are rising, long-term rental offers are being converted into short-term rentals. Investors with different profiles (from small private investors to large real estate funds) are buying apartments to place them on the booming short-term rental markets. Neighborhoods in a large number of urban regions are changing. As a result, long-term tenants are being displaced, supply infrastructures are changing, and the public sector is trying to regulate with various instruments. We are investigating the complex processes involved, the specific constellation of actors and the political, economic, social and legal backgrounds in various research projects.
Touristification, rent gap and the local political economy of Airbnb in Salzburg (Austria)
Short-term rentals as a new urban frontier – evidence from European cities
Vacancy and underutilized housing
Contact person at the department: Christian Smigiel
Vacany and underutilized housing is a major problem in many cities. At the same time, there are only a few studies that deal with this topic empirically. A project funded by the City of Salzburg (funding period 2021-2022) shows for the first time how apartments without residence registration are distributed in new housing in the city of Salzburg.Specifically, Christian Smigiel (Department of Social Science Geography) and Andreas Van-Hametner (Ressourcen Forum Austria) have investigated which factors favor vacancy and secondary residences in urban, multi-storey new housing construction.This study serves as a basis for further housing policy strategies in the city of Salzburg.
A summary and an article on the study can be found here:
https://www.plus.ac.at/news/mindergenutzter-wohnraum-in-salzburg/
https://www.staedtebund.gv.at/ePaper/oegz-2023-05/index.html#p=56
“Salzburg morgen” – Cooperation with the Robert Jungk Bibliothek für Zukunftsfragen
Contact persons at the department: Claudia Herbst, Andreas Koch
In the face of complex social challenges, the project “Salzburg morgen” aims to create a well-founded basis for the social discussion of potential future scenarios and to identify possible courses of action for the desirable development of Salzburg.
Under the leadership of Stefan Wally, Managing Director of the Robert Jungk Bibliothek für Zukunftsfragen, an interdisciplinary team of experts outlines possible future developments and potential challenges based on a dynamic interaction of current knowledge. Potential scenarios are regularly reviewed, adapted, and published as a foundation for well-founded discussions and decisions.
The study focuses on various areas, including demographics, the world of work, digitalization, migration, and the environment, and is supported by expertise from the department on “Cultural Diversity” (Claudia Herbst) and “Housing” (Andreas Koch), among others. With the help of the structured scenario method, alternative visions of the future for the year 2040 are systematically developed and presented.
Salzburg morgen | Das Zukunftsprojekt der JBZ vor Ort
Salzburg Authoritarianism Study: On the Development of Authoritarian Attitudes and Value Polarizations
Contact person at the department: Wolfgang Aschauer
In the authoritarianism study, representative surveys on authoritarian and anti-egalitarian attitudes have been conducted in Salzburg every three years since 2017 on behalf of the Robert Jungk Library.
The aim of the study is to highlight social divisions based on specific topics such as distribution issues, migration, climate protection and diversity. In 2021, for example, the focus was on the coronavirus pandemic and the polarization of values in 2024. Qualitative interviews with voters on the right and left of the social spectrum complete the picture and show which argumentation patterns are predominant in the respective political milieus.The study thus shows how political attitudes and social conflicts influence the way we live together – and what this could mean for Salzburg’s future.
“Paths to the future” – a study on the socialization of young people in Vienna
Contributor to the department: Brigitte Schels
The longitudinal study “Pathways to the Future” focuses on school leavers from (new) secondary schools in Vienna from a holistic perspective. The topics of the study are educational pathways and career choices, entry into employment and labor market policy, family relationships and identity formation as interconnected areas of the youth phase of life.
The project was carried out as an institute project at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Vienna in a mixed-methods design with the involvement of various cooperation partners. Following data collection from 2016 to 2022, the project will now be concluded with qualification work and publications.
Institutsprojekt “Wege in die Zukunft”
Everyday livelihood practices of households in hard times
Contact person at the department: Brigitte Schels
It is known from international research that households use various measures in their everyday lives to stabilize their livelihoods in the face of volatile incomes. However, few studies to date have looked at the situation of households in relatively prosperous welfare states.
Particularly in the years of the so-called polycrisis since 2020, private households have increasingly felt financial burdens and income losses.
The project ‘Household Practices and Resilience of Households’ is a cooperation with the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Germany. We examine, the everyday livelihood practices of households in Germany, their socio-economic determinants and the consequences for wellbeing. The analysis is based on a survey module that we developed for the Panel Labor Market and Social Security (PASS).
Household practices and resilience (E2-RES)
Loss of income and selected coping measures are also a topic in the Austrian short-term panel “How we are doing today”, which has repeatedly surveyed people since 2021. With this data, we expand the perspective for the Austrian context and examine whether individuals assess the use of measures as fruitful. Questions about trends during the observation period are also at the forefront.
Worries about the future as social indicators
Contact persons at the department: Wolfgang Aschauer, Christopher Etter
Current sociological diagnoses of the times point to the crisis nature of modern, post-industrial societies and discuss potential effects for individuals along the lines of concepts such as insecurity, fear of loss, worries and psychological stress and their reach into broad segments of the population. However, there is often a lack of suitable indicators to link people’s experiences with socio-structural circumstances. The cooperation project with Dimitri Prandner (JKU Linz) therefore deals with the measurement of worries about the future in surveys, its determinants and effects. For this purpose, a scale on current worries about the future in the Austrian population was developed and implemented in the 2023 and 2024 waves of the Austrian Social Survey (SSÖ), as well as in a comprehensive online study in the D-A-CH region. Initial findings are available in a Science-To-Public Report (with Christopher Etter, Dimitri Prandner, Wolfgang Aschuer).
Zukunftssorgen in der österreichischen Bevölkerung – Sozialer Survey 2023 – Datenreport 1
