24.01.2012

Informal Economy, Vulnerabilities and Employment

Prof. Michel Oris, professor at the University of Geneva and co-director of NCCR LIVES, will open an international conference on "Informal Economy, Vulnerabilities and Employment" on February 9th and 10th, 2012, Geneva.

This international conference, organized by the Institute of Socioeconomics of the University of Geneva, in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) and the International Labour Organization, is concerned with the interactions between informal economy, vulnerabilities and employment. It will bring over thirty experts from Africa, Asia, America and Europe together for an intensive two-days conference held in English at the University of Geneva.

Conference venue: Room M1160, Unimail, Bd Pont-d'Arve 40.

Admission is free but registration is necessary. Please sign in to sandra.constantin@unige.ch <mailto:sandra.constantin@unige.ch>.

More information: http://www.unige.ch/ses/socioeco/institut/recherche/InformalEconomy.html Contact: sandra.constantin@unige.ch, Isabelle.Hillenkamp@unige.ch or Michel.Oris@unige.ch

24.01.2012

NCCR LIVES at the congress of the Swiss Society of Gerontology

Pasqualina Perrig-Chiello, professor at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Bern and head of an individual project within the PRN LIVES, will speak at the SSG convention of 2012 at the University "Miséricorde" of Fribourg. Posters on researches conducted by teams of professors Dario Spini and Michel Oris, respectively director and co-director of the NCCR LIVES, will also be presented during the congress.

The conference of Prof. Pasqualina Perrig-Chiello will take place in plenary on Friday, February 3 at 12:20. It will be titled "Grand Ages: solidarity between generations as a family challenge" and will be held in German.

As part of the National centre of competence in research (NCCR) LIVES, Prof. Pasqualina Perrig-Chiello is responsible for the individual project No. 12, "Vulnerability and Development: Developmental dynamics and differential effects of the loss of an intimate partner in the second half of life."

During the congress of the SSG, an exhibition and a poster competition of various researches will be held on Friday 3 all day. Several researchers from LIVES will present their work, supervised by Prof. Dario Spini, Director of the NCCR, University of Lausanne, and Prof. Michel Oris, co-director, University of Geneva. A session with the authors will run from 10:20 to 11:00. The award ceremony will take place at 15:30.

23.01.2012

Analyzing the relationship between trajectories and predictors

Matthias Studer, doctoral student at the Department of Economics, University of Geneva, a member of LIVES, will speak on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012, at 12:30 at the premises of the NCCR LIVES, Vidy Building, Room 531.

  • Meeting "Methods and Research": dispersion analysis of sequences of states, trajectories and links between variables
  • Organized by Prof. André Berchtold, senior lecturer and fellow at PRN LIVE, a joint seminar between the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (SSP) of the University of Lausanne and the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS)

The sequence analysis has become one of the preferred methods to analyze the trajectories. It allows to study in a holistic recurring patterns and taking into account the multiplicity of possible states. Technically, this is based on a measure of distance between trajectories, which allows to compare them. In practice, these distances are often used to construct a typology of trajectories and trajectories identify types.

Beyond the descriptive approach, the focus is typically to identify factors that influence the construction of the path. To do this, it is customary to relate the types obtained with other factors of interest, such as gender, using logistic regression or tests of association. However, focusing on the types of trajectories, we lose information, which can lead to misleading conclusions. We present a set of methods that can analyze the relationship between the sequences on the one hand and one or more explanatory factors on the other. Originally used in ecology, these methods rely on the definition of a measure of dispersion of the sequences and on a generalization of the principles of analysis of variance (ANOVA) for all types of dissimilarities. Conceptually, these methods allow a paradigm shift. Rather than relying on the search for models of trajectories, we consider that they are inserted in multiple contexts that influence - in their own way - the construction of a trajectory. These methods thus complement traditional sequence analysis, primarily exploratory, with a confirmatory approach.

Matthias Studer holds a DAS in sociology from the University of Geneva. He is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Economics, University of Geneva. Inside NCCR LIVES, he participates to IP6 and IP14.

10.01.2012

International Symposium "Work, Gender and Aging"

The international symposium "Work, Gender and Aging: What dynamics of discrimination?" will be held Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 17:00 and Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 18:00 in Anthropole UNIL, Dorigny, Room 2044.

How do the "seniors" invest and stage of their life course? How women, in particular, are they affected by the promotion of "active aging"? The event is organized by the Gender Studies Centre in Liège and the Laboratory of Sociology (Labso), with support from NCCR LIVES.

Full program on http://www.unil.ch/getactu/wwwliege/1323704965898/