Team Jörg Flecker

10/2022 - 09/2025

ÖAW Doc-team Fellowship for Michael Duncan and Paul Malschinger in cooperation with Katharina Danner (Department of Educational Science).

Finding an independent social position as a central task of the life phase of youth is of fundamental importance for questions of social reproduction and transformation. This positioning process is characterized by a pluralization of life plans on the one hand and a persistence of cross-generational social inequality on the other. 

Against this backdrop, the project focuses on how young people deal with these challenging social conditions and the associated processes of transformation and reproduction of social inequality. An interdisciplinary team, which combines educational and sociological perspectives as well as different thematic and methodological foci, is dedicated to this research concern.

Data derived from the project “Pathways to the Future” by the Department of Sociology builds the basis for a secondary analysis in J:Ung, combining qualitative and quantitative analyses in order to work on individual research questions. The thematic focal points are the areas of ideas about the future (Malschinger), professional and educational biographies (Duncan) and political commitment (Danner).

03/22 - 02/2026

The University of Vienna and FORBA are the Austrian correspondents for the EU agency 'European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions' (Eurofound). As correspondents we report on current developments in working life, restructuring processes and changes in legislation. The team at the University of Vienna is reporting restructuring events and changes in public support instruments to the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM).

10/2021 - 09/2024

More and more, people are encouraged to optimize their bodies and their way of living. Electronic tools providing feedback are often used for this purpose. In working life, organizational cultures increasingly demand individuals to control and optimize themselves while highly digitalized work settings tend to contribute to work intensification. In such a context, digital devices using biometric data may gain currency. These tools bear the risk of excessive (self-)optimization and thus foster ‘motivated self-endangerment’, i.e. to risk one’s health to advance professionally. However, such tools may also be used to help to protect employees’ health precisely under conditions of work intensification. The aim of the project is to explore the possibilities to use electronic tools providing feedback on states of the body to achieve a work-humanizing effect. To reach such an aim, a conscious and goal-oriented design of technology and specific social contexts of use are needed.

High workloads and stress levels are burning issues in many fields of white-collar work and thus of great interest to the general public. This project addresses these topic in a novel way. In particular, ShapeTech focuses the ambivalence between self-optimization on the one hand and health promotion on the other by exploring the design options and usage contexts of self-monitoring tools with the goal of humanizing highly digitalized work. In doing so, it will analyze how employees in such work environments use a self-monitoring tool based on biometric data to become aware of stressful situations at work. The project then investigates how workers may share their experiences in occupational health circles and how they may develop joint suggestions for improvements of work settings. The project will both promote humanized design and usage of self-monitoring tools currently gaining currency and explore the possibilities to use such tools to support the humanization of highly digitalized work settings. 

Funding: Wiener Wissenschafts- Forschungs- und Technologiefonds (WWTF)

Cooperation with:
- Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT)
- TU Wien
- Working Life Research Centre, Vienna (FORBA)

09/2020 - 04/2023

Marienthal.reversed accompanies the world’s first job guarantee project, initiated and implemented by the AMS (Public Employment Service) for Lower Austria. The Modellprojekt Arbeitsplatzgarantie Marienthal (MAGMA, Marienthal job guarantee pilot project) is based on a three-year mixed-methods longitudinal approach and is targeted at the long-term unemployed in Gramatneusiedl, Austria. This project is intended as accompanying research to the social sciences study Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (the unemployed of Marienthal) by Marie Jahoda, Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Hans Zeisel, based on a reversed research interest. It investigates the transition out of long-term unemployment into subsidised employment, as well as the effects of a job guarantee on the unemployed. Over the course of the project, the researchers carry out quantitative and qualitative surveys investigating the experiences and subjective perceptions of all project participants at regular intervals. The project aims to evaluate the job guarantee measure using a mixed-methods approach and to provide informative insights into how the measure is perceived, the transition out of long-term unemployment, the social participation of those affected as well as the changes to their realities of life. How do the persons surveyed experience the transition out of long-term unemployment, the period of unemployment and participation in the MAGMA project? How does the introduction of a job guarantee change the affected persons’ life satisfaction and self-efficacy, their health and health-related behaviour, their financial situation and the organisation of everyday life? Does the project lead to changes in social relations? Do the persons participating in the project experience respect and recognition, social inclusion or exclusion? The project team aims to investigate these issues in this accompanying study, designed as a research project that involves students enrolled on the master’s programme in Sociology.

12/2016 - 12/2022

The research project “Paths to the Future” is a longitudinal study using a variety of methods. Over the next 5 years (at least), the study will accompany young people in Vienna on their course through life and on their transition from an Austrian so-called new secondary school to other educational institutions, vocational education, labour market training measures and professional life. The observation of young people during these important stages of life enables us to identify opportunities and obstacles, significant events and actions of the participants. The survey focuses on different, interconnected stages during adolescence: educational system and vocational training, professional life and labour market training measures, family relationships and social networks as well as identity-forming processes and dynamics of youth culture. On the one hand, the project analyses lives in relation to social origin, educational success and labour market opportunities, as well as the conceived or promised, desired or dreaded future of young people in Vienna on the other hand. This project run by the Department of Sociology takes a holistic approach and involves all research areas of the Department, such as migration, work, family, culture, city or social inequality.

=> Project website