Professor Pieter-Paul Verhaeghe of the Brussels Institute for Social and Population Studies (BRISPO) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) has received a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant to explore the link between racism and social immobility.
The grant, totalling nearly €2 million (€1,968,788), will fund a five-year research project named MARIS—short for “A Multidimensional Analysis of Racism and Immobility at the Societal Level.” VUB describes the project as groundbreaking, as it examines, for the first time, how racism and intergenerational social stagnation are interconnected.
Through MARIS, Verhaeghe aims to build a comprehensive understanding of how ethnic background and socioeconomic status shape individuals’ opportunities in society. “Exclusion doesn’t work in just one way,” he explains. “Access to education, income, status, and social class often depends on how people are perceived or treated based on their background. These sources of inequality haven’t been studied together in much detail, particularly across countries.”
To address this gap, Verhaeghe will combine four dimensions of racism with four key concepts of social immobility. This integrated approach seeks to uncover patterns in how structural barriers accumulate and to explore the contexts where individuals manage to overcome them.
“What makes MARIS unique is that we aim to understand not just 'if' racism and social immobility are linked, but also 'how' that relationship evolves across different countries and how policies influence it,” says Verhaeghe. His interdisciplinary research bridges sociology with social psychology, economics, and political science. “We are creating an entirely new paradigm in social and economic sciences.”
