ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute and the British Sociological Association

Friday 10 November 1.30 - 6.00pm. In-person event. ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Parish Building (PAR), Room 1.02.

Chaired by BSA President, Gurminder K Bhambra, this workshop addresses the concept of caste and locates it within broader sociologies of inequality. Dr Suraj Yengde, one of India’s leading scholars and public intellectuals, will speak to the intersections of caste and race, followed by comments from colleagues from across the disciplines of History, Philosophy, and Sociology. This session will be followed by a panel of early career scholars working with the idea of caste and discussing issues of activism, secularization, and economic agency.

Speakers: , Harvard University/ University of Oxford; Faisal Devji, University of Oxford; Meena Dhanda 
University of Wolverhampton; John Holmwood, University of Nottingham; Urvi Khaitan, University of Oxford; Simple Rajrah, University of Oxford; Kumud Ranjan, O.P. Jindal Global University

Chair: Gurminder K Bhambra, BSA President

 

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Good jobs, bad jobs in the UK labour market

Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Thursday 9 November 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building.

Speakers:
Professor Kirsten Sehnbruch, British Academy Global Professor and Distinguished Policy Fellow, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III
Sir Stephen Timms MP, Member of Parliament for East Ham and Faith Envoy, Labour Party
Professor James Foster, Oliver T. Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, George Washington University

Chair:
Professor Vanessa Rubio-Márquez, Associate Dean for Extended Education and Professor in Practice, School of Public Policy, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

In the context of a worldwide cost-of-living crisis and likely recession, policy attention will focus increasingly on poverty and employment. In the UK, as elsewhere, those workers employed in low-wage, unstable jobs with poor working conditions are likely to suffer disproportionately in this crisis, thus exacerbating existing inequalities. This event will discuss how we can define and measure deprivation in the labour market, by applying a methodology widely used to measure multidimensional poverty to the labour market, using the UK as a case study.

To attend in-person: No ticket or pre-registration is required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis.

To attend online: Registration for this event will open after 10am on Thursday 19 October.

 

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Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute and the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity

Thursday 26th October 2023 6.00pm to 7.00pm. In-person event. ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Centre Building (CBG), Room 1.06. 

Speaker: Dr Maël Lavenaire, Caribbean and Latin America historian and Research Fellow in Racial Inequality at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ International Inequalities Institute

To celebrate Black History Month 2023, Dr Maël Lavenaire (ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ International Inequalities Institute) takes you on a journey to the 1960s, 70s and 80s in his home country of Guadeloupe (French Caribbean), where the struggle for political independence started in 1963 and turned into an armed struggle 20 years later. The event shines light on Caribbean scholar Professor Jean-Pierre Sainton and his singular contribution to Caribbean history.

Born in 1954, Professor Sainton was the son of one of the independentist leaders, Dr Pierre Sainton, who was arrested in 1967 in a colonial repression led by the French government to ensure its sovereignty on the French Antilles in a global context marked by the decolonisation. Growing up in this atmosphere, Professor Sainton became a militant for the independence movement, but at the beginning of the 90s, the failure of this struggle marked by bomb attacks and the deaths of several militants inspired him to better understand the political history of Guadeloupe as a post-slavery society characterised by socio-racial inequalities. This led him to become the most important contributor to the political history of the French Antilles.

 

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The psychosis of whiteness

Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute and Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity

Wednesday 25 October 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building.

Speakers:
Professor Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies, Birmingham City University
Dr Sara Camacho Felix, Assistant Professor (Education) and Programme Lead, Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Chair:
Dr Maël Lavenaire, Research Fellow in Racial Inequality, Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Join us for a talk by Kehinde Andrews about his new book, The psychosis of whiteness. An all-encompassing, insightful and wry look at living in a racist world, by a leading black British voice in the academy and in the media. Society cannot face up to the racism at its heart and in its history, so the delusions and hallucinations it conjures up to avoid doing so can only best be described as a psychosis, and the costs are being borne by the sons and daughters of that racist history.

 

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The golden passport: global mobility for millionaires

Co-hosted with the Department of Sociology

Tuesday 24 October 2023 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building.

Speakers:

Dr Kristin Surak, Associate Professor of Political Sociology at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Thomas Anthony, Chief Executive Officer of the Grenada Citizenship by Investment Unit

Oliver Bullough, author of the Butler to the World: how Britain became the servant of tycoons, tax dodgers, kleptocrats and criminals

Professor Jason Sharman, Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge

Chair:

Professor Mike Savage, Martin White Professor of Sociology at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

This event marks the publication of Kristin Surak’s new book, The Golden Passport: global mobility for millionaires, which offers the first on-the-ground investigation of the global market for citizenship by investment.

Drawing on fieldwork in sixteen countries, Kristin Surak exposes the world of the wealthy elites who buy passports, the states and brokers who sell them, and the normalisation of a once shadowy practice. It’s a business that thrives on uncertainty and imbalances of power between big, globalised economies and tiny states desperate for investment. In between are fascinating stories of buyers, brokers, and sellers, all ready to profit from the citizenship trade. Joining Kristin will be three experts who offer different angles into this world. Thomas Anthony, CEO of Citizenship Investment Unit of the country of Grenada, brings a Caribbean perspective on the programs. Oliver Bullough, author and journalist, has examined issues around financial crimes. Jason Sharman of Cambridge University will share his extensive knowledge of the political economy of offshore.

 

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Platform economy: utopia or dystopia?

CANCELLED AND POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

Hosted the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity, Department of Geography and Environment and International Inequalities Institute

Wednesday 18 October 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Auditorium, Centre Building.

Speakers:
Dalia Gebrial, PhD Candidate, Department of Geography and Environment, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳
Kruskaya Hidalgo Cordero, Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic
Equity, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III
Gabriella Razzano, Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III
Professor Kirsten Sehnbruch, British Academy Global Professor and Distinguished Policy Fellow, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Chair:
Dr Romola Sanyal, Associate Professor in Urban Geography, Department of Geography and Environment, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

In recent years, digital platforms such as Uber, Amazon, AirBnB, and Deliveroo have become increasingly popular across the globe, radically changing the economic landscape and the nature of work. But does the emergence of the platform economy and gig work create a utopia or dystopia for workers?

To attend in-person: No ticket or pre-registration is required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis.

 

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Hosted by ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Library, the International Inequalities Institute and the Department of Anthropology

Wednesday 11 October 6.00pm to 7.30pm. Online and in-person public event. Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building.

Speakers:
Santosh Dass MBE, Chair of the Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance and President of the Federation of Ambedkarite and Buddhist Organisations UK
Sue Donnelly, Former Head of Archives and Special Collections, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳
Professor William Gould, Professor of Indian History, University of Leeds
Professor Christophe Jaffrelot, Avantha Chair and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology, King’s India Institute, King's College London

Chair:
Tarun Khaitan, Professor of Public Law at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Law School and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at Melbourne Law School

Join us for a talk with the editors and authors of the recently published book, Ambedkar in London. Ambedkar was one of India’s greatest intellectuals and social reformers; his political ideas continue to inspire and mobilise some of the world’s poorest and most socially disadvantaged, in India and the global Indian diaspora. There will also be a chance to view the bust of Ambedkar, gifted to ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ by the Federation of Ambedkarite and Buddhist Organisations UK, and items from the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Library’ archives including Ambedkar’s student file.

 

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Counting the divide: how the World Bank and the UN should strengthen the way they measure inequality

Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Tuesday 03 October 2023 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online. 

Speakers:

Professor Francisco H G Ferreira, Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and Director of the International Inequalities Institute at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳.

Professor Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Executive Secretary of International Development Economics Associates.

Dr José Gabriel Palma, Emeritus Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge, and Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Administration and Economics of USACH.

Chair:

Dr Faiza Shaheen, Visiting Professor in Practice at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ and Program Lead on Inequality and Exclusion at the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, NYU.

In July, 2023, over 225 economists and inequality leaders  and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, drawing attention to alarmingly high levels of national and global inequality and the harm this is causing to people across the world. The letter called on the World Bank and UN to strengthen its indicators and goals on inequality urgently to address this dangerous divide.

In this panel discussion, four of the key signatories to the letter will discuss in more detail what needs to happen urgently at the UN and the World Bank to redouble efforts to fight inequality.

 

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Know Your Place: how society sets us up to fail – and what we can do about it

Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Monday 19 June 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Auditorium, Centre Building.

Speakers:
Dr Faiza Shaheen, Visiting Professor in Practice, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III and Program Lead on Inequality and Exclusion, NYU Center on International Cooperation
Kimberly McIntosh, Writer and Researcher
Gary Stevenson, Inequality Economist and former Trader
Professor Gary Younge, Author and Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester

Chair:
Professor Mike Savage, Martin White Professor of Sociology, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of Sociology and Research Programme Leader, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

This event marks the launch of Know Your Place: how society sets us up to fail – and what we can do about it, the new book by Faiza Shaheen – part memoir, part polemic, this is a personal and statistical look at how society is built, the people it leaves behind, and what we can do about it. Our panel of speakers will discuss the prospects for social mobility in Britain today, and how we can create opportunities for all.

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What Would a Fairer Society Look Like?

Hosted by ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Festival: People and Change

Saturday 17 June 6.00pm to 7.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Marshall Building.

Speakers:
Daniel Chandler, Economist and Philosopher, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳
Dr Ayça Çubukçu, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳
Swatee Deepak, Practitioner in Residence, Marshall Institute, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳
Lord David Willetts, President of the Resolution Foundation

Chair:
Professor Neil Lee, Professor of Economic Geography, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of Geography and Environment and Faculty Associate, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Have inequalities become so entrenched that we can no longer imagine a fairer society? Whilst many are dissatisfied with the status quo, it is surprisingly hard to find a coherent vision of what a better and fairer world would look like. In the Festival’s closing event, leading thinkers put forward their suggestions.

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This is Not America: why black lives in Britain matter

Hosted by ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Festival: People and Change

Saturday 17 June 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Online and in-person public event. Marshall Building.

Speakers:
Tomiwa Owolade, Writer and Critic

Chair:
Professor Mike Savage, Martin White Professor of Sociology ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of Sociology and Research Programme Leader, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

In This is Not America, Tomiwa Owolade argues that too much of the conversation around race in Britain is viewed through the prism of American ideas that don't reflect the history, challenges and achievements of increasingly diverse black populations at home. If we want to build a long-lasting and more effective anti-racist agenda - one that truly values black British communities - we must acknowledge that crucial differences exist between Britain and America; that we are talking about distinct communities and cultures, distinguished by language, history, class, religion and national origin.

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Can people change the world? Activists, social movements, and utopian futures

Hosted by ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Festival: People and Change

Saturday 17 June 11.00am to 12.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Marshall Building.

Listen to the podcast

Speakers:
Dr Armine Ishkanian, Associate Professor, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of Social Policy and Executive Director of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III
Dr Faiza Shaheen, Visiting Professor in Practice, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III and Program Lead on Inequality and Exclusion, NYU Center on International Cooperation
Georgia Haddad Nicolau, Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and Co-founder and Director of Instituto Procomum

Chair:
Dr Maël Lavenaire, Research Fellow in Racial Inequality at the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, inequality is on the rise, but so is grassroots activism. More and more individuals and groups are taking action and using their voices to tackle the growing social and economic inequalities. Looking beyond just forms of resistance, this panel will discuss the role of activists and social movements in today’s world and examine their agency in imagining utopian futures and creating change. How are social movements providing creative spaces for not only challenging inequalities but also coming up with alternative ideas for solutions to address the problems they are fighting against? And how and to what extent are these ideas informing policy changes?

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Black Ghost of Empire: failed emancipations, reparations, and Maroon ecologies

Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Wednesday 7 June 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Old Theatre, Old Building.

Speaker:
Professor Kris Manjapra, Professor, Department of History, Tufts University

Chair:
Professor Alpa Shah, Professor of Anthropology, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of Anthropology and Research Programme Leader, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

To understand why the shadow of slavery haunts us today, we must confront the way that it ended. In this public event Kris Manjapra considers the implications of his book Black Ghost of Empire for climate justice. Manjapra argues that during each of the supposed emancipations from slavery – whether Haiti after the revolution, the British Empire in 1833 or the United States during the Civil War – Black people were dispossessed by the moves meant to free them. Emancipation codified existing racial-colonial hierarchies - rather than obliterating them, with far-reaching consequences for climate colonialism and for environmental justice.

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Domestic Mobilities and Colonial Legacies: A Colloquium

Hosted by ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ International Inequalities Institute and ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of International History

Thursday 1 June 2023, 12.00 to 1.30pm. In-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speakers:
Professor Victoria Haskins, University of Newcastle, Australia
Associate Professor Claire Lowrie, University of Wollongong, Australia
Professor Swapna Banerjee, CUNY (Brooklyn College and Graduate Center), USA

Chair:
Dr Shalini Grover, Research Fellow, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

In this special colloquium, three historians present highlights from their current research from the Australian Research Council Discovery Project, Ayahs and Amahs: Transcolonial Servants in Australia and Britain 1780-1945. Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, South Asian and East Asian women travelled extensively as careworkers for elite European and Asian families around the circuits of the British empire. Indeed, so extensive was their travel that “the travelling ayahs and amahs” became a recognizable occupational category. Their transcolonial journeys both complicate and illuminate the long history of international inequalities in carework. They might even, perhaps, be regarded as a prototype for 21st century global domestic workers. In this discussion we address the legacies – archival and cultural – of this history that continue to reverberate in our world today.

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 Uncomfortably off: Why the top 10% of earners should care about inequality

Hosted by the Department of Social Policy and the International Inequalities Institute

Wednesday 31 May 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building.

Speakers:
Dr Marcos González Hernando, Honorary Research Fellow, UCL Social Research Institute
Dr Gerry Mitchell, Social Researcher, Campaigner and Community Activist
Anook Chakelian, Britain Editor, the New Statesman
Dr Arun Advani, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Warwick and Visiting Senior Fellow, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Chair:
Dr Tania Burchardt, Associate Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) and Associate Professor, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of Social Policy

Media attention is often focused on the very richest, the 1%, and their capacity to influence politics and shape society. But they are not the only ones who drive politics, the public conversation and much of the private sector. The focus of this book is on the larger top 10%, the managers and professionals of our media, business, the third sector, political parties and academia and who are just as influential. Drawing attention to this powerful section of society, this book, Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care about Inequality, (Policy Press) explains why, even if you are relatively near the top, it is in your interest that inequality is reduced.

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Aid and the Transnational Extraction of Care

Part of the Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 30 May 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speaker:
Dr Dinah Hannaford, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Houston

Chair:
Dr Shalini Grover, Research Fellow, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Hiring domestic workers is a routine part of the expat development lifestyle. Though nearly every expat aid worker in the developing world has local people working within the intimate sphere of their homes—as maids, nannies, security guards, gardeners, and chauffeurs—these relationships are seldom, if ever, discussed in analyses of the development paradigm and its praxis. Examining aid workers as employers of domestic labor provides an opportunity to reach a deeper understanding about the function of development both as an industry and as an orienting framework in our contemporary world, as well as a means to consider the role of aid workers as post-colonial subjects in Africa.

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Patriarchy: where did it all begin?

Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute and the Wollstonecraft Society

Wednesday 24 May 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online and in-person public event. Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building.

Listen to the podcast

Speakers:
Angela Saini, Journalist and Author
Bee Rowlatt, Author and Programmer of Events, Wollstonecraft Society

Chair:
Professor Alpa Shah, Professor of Anthropology, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of Anthropology and Research Programme Leader, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Award-winning writer Angela Saini gives this year’s Wollstonecraft Society Lecture, sharing from her hotly-anticipated book The Patriarchs. Join us as Angela reveals the true roots of gendered oppression, and the complex history of how male domination became embedded in societies across the globe. Travelling to the world’s earliest known human settlements, and tracing cultural and political histories from the Americas to Asia, she overturns simplistic universal theories to show that what patriarchy is and how far it goes back really depends on where you are. Despite the push back against sexism and exploitation in our own time, even revolutionary efforts to bring about equality have often ended in failure and backlash.

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Job Insecurity, Savings and Consumption: an Italian experiment

Part of the Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 23 May 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speaker:
Professor Conchita D’Ambrosio, Professor of Economics, Université du Luxembourg 

Chair:
Professor Francisco H. G. Ferreira, Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and Director, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Job insecurity has consequences outside of the labour market. Using the 2012 Fornero reform as a natural experiment, a difference-in-differences framework based on a firm-size discontinuity and individual data coming from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth, our results suggest that greater job insecurity reduces consumption and increases savings. We also show that the changes in consumption and savings are a function of the family structure and of the rank in the household income distribution. Last, greater job insecurity reduces all types of consumption except food expenditures and the extra-savings are either invested in safe assets or kept on savings account.

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Assessment of Individual Income Growth with Relative Concerns

Part of the Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 16 May 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speaker:
Professor Elena Bárcena Martín, Professor of Applied Economics, University of Malaga

Chair:
Professor Facundo Alvaredo, Professorial Research Fellow, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III and Co-Director of the World Inequality Database and the World Inequality Lab

We assess individual income growth providing a framework in which each individual accounts for own income growth and for the growth of each individual’s reference group. We take as a starting point the concept of relative deprivation, in which an individual compares with those who are better off, and interpret it as the extent to which an individual is left behind. In this line, we propose that individuals evaluate own income and compare it with income growth of other people in society, which are taken as a sort of benchmark. After some computation, progressive growth and re-ranking are identified at the individual level, and the first component is broken down into one term that captures growth self-concern and another that accounts for growth with respect to others, or relative concerns. The empirical application to Spain over the past ten years shows that this measure supplements the analyses based on common metrics of income distribution and how it helps to identify the different aspects of income growth assessment.

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The Dynamics of Lifetime Incomes in France

Part of the Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 9 May 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speaker:
Professor Cecilia García-Peñalosa, Professor of Economics, Aix-Marseille School of Economics

Chair:
Dr H. Xavier Jara, Research Officer, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

This seminar examines the evolution of lifetime earnings in France. We have access to complete earnings histories that allow us to compute lifetime earnings for the cohorts born between 1942 and 1962. The data show that after increasing for several cohorts, median incomes have been flat, although we do not find the decline in median lifetime earnings observed in the US. Lifetime earnings inequality exhibits small changes across cohorts, following a U-shaped pattern but without the marked increase observed in the US. The stability of lifetime inequality seems to be the result of a period of declining dispersion in annual (cross-sectional) earnings and a subsequent decrease in earnings mobility over the lifetime. These results point towards both institutions, such as the minimum wage, and social norms related to female participation as important factors in shaping lifetime earnings dispersion.

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Oligarch Sanctions: policies, evasion strategies and side effects

Part of the Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 2 May 12.30pm to 1.30pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speaker:
Dr Elisabeth Schimpfössl, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Aston University and Visiting Senior Fellow, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Chair:
Dr Armine Ishkanian, Executive Director of AFSEE programme and Associate Professor, Department of Social Policy

Individual sanction policies have yet to deliver. In the EU and the UK in particular, legal loopholes and gentle sanction designs have given sanctioned oligarchs ample opportunities and time rearrange and evacuate their assets and non-sanctioned, and lesser-known rich to reinvent themselves as longtime Kremlin critics. Compared to the EU and the UK, where a year into the war more than half a dozen of the 20 richest Russians were missing, the US list is less patchy, but it too skipped the name ranked no 1 by Forbes Russia from April 2022. Once it was clear that the war would drag on, Western wealth industries changed tune and declared oligarch boycotts to a core corporate principle. This seminar attempts to take stock of responses to international individual sanction policies since February 2022.

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Opportunity and Mobility Workshop

Monday 24 April 2023 9.00am to 7.30pm. Closed workshop. ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Fawcett House.

Keynote Speaker:
Professor Stephen Machin, Professor of Economics, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Find out more

A Just Transition Masterclass with Sharan Burrow

Hosted by ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ International Inequalities Institute

Friday 31 March 10.00am to 11.30am. In-person event.

Speaker:
Sharan Burrow, Visiting Professor at Practice, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Grantham Institute

Delivering a just transition for workers and communities is recognised as essential for climate and sustainability progress. One of the world’s champions of the just transition is Sharan Burrow. Sharan is a global trade union leader and advocate for sustainable development, most recently as the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) from 2010 to 2022. Previously Sharan was President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) from 2000 to 2010. She is a passionate advocate and campaigner for social justice, women’s rights, and placing people, not least as workers, at the heart of environmental and climate action.

The event will open with remarks from Sharan on lessons learned with the just transition and priorities ahead. There will then be a moderated discussion, identifying key areas for further research, policy reform and advocacy.

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Of Boys and Men: New challenges for gender equality

Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Thursday 23 March 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Online and in-person public event. The Auditorium, Centre Building.

Listen to the podcast

Speakers:
Dr Richard V. Reeves, Senior Fellow in Economic Studies and Director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative, Brookings Institution
Dr Abigail McKnight, Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE), ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Chair:
Professor Nicola Lacey, School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Law School

Profound economic and social changes of recent decades have left many men at a disadvantage in areas like higher education. Many previous attempts to treat this condition have made the same fatal mistake - of viewing the problems of men as a problem with men. In his new book, Richard V Reeves explores how the male malaise is the result of deep structural challenges and societal issues. Richard draws on a careful analysis of social, economic, and demographic trends; current discussions on gender in psychology, public policy, economics and sociology; as well as on interviews with men and women, girls and boys.

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Job loss and earnings inequality: Distributional effects from re-employment in Chile

Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series

Thursday 23 March 12.00pm to 1.00pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speaker:
Dr Rafael Carranza, Postdoctoral Research Officer at INET Oxford and the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford and Visiting Fellow, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Chair:
Dr Berkay Ozcan, Associate Professor, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of Social Policy and Faculty Associate, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Existing research has shown that job displacement leads to significant and persistent earnings losses in Global North countries, but evidence for Global South countries is scarce. Using administrative data for Chile, this seminar will analyse the effects of formal job loss on workers’ subsequent wages. It provides evidence of the costs of losing formal employment in a country that has become a high-income country in recent years but with a weak labour protection system and high earnings inequality. Second, it examines the effect of job separation on earnings distribution using conditional quantile regressions. 

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The Changing Nature of Global Economy: Digital Technology, Labour and Inequality

Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 14 March 12.00pm to 1.00pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speaker:
Professor Kaushik Basu, C. Marks Professor of International Studies and Professor of Economics, Cornell University

Chair:
Professor Francisco H. G. Ferreira, Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and Director, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

The lecture will review the recent global experience and discuss the new challenges not just for economic theory, but for regulation, law and policies to curb inequality. This bend in the road of the global economy is bound to bring about new winners and new losers among nations, in the same way that the Industrial Revolution had done. The lecture will also peer into the future and speculate about who the winners and the losers might be. 

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Viable Lives: Life beyond survival in rural North India

Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 7 March 12.00pm to 1.00pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speakers:
Professor Craig Jeffrey, Professor of Human Geography, University of Melbourne
Associate Professor Jane Dyson, Associate Professor of Human Geography, University of Melbourne

Chair:
Dr Shalini Grover, Research Fellow, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

Many minoritized and marginalised populations, including young people, are debating what constitutes a ‘survivable life’ and, in turn, how life can be arranged so that it is more than just survival. In this process they are often analysing how to conceptualise ‘life’. Notwithstanding these trends, however, there is little scholarly work on local discourses and practices of life and viability. This seminar contributes to redressing the balance by examining the spatial and temporal process through which young people imagine and build viable lives in an area of the Indian Himalayas.

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Qualitative analysis at scale: An application to aspirations in Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh

Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series

Monday 13 February 12.00pm to 1.00pm. Online and in-person public event. New Academic Building 1.14.

Speakers:
Dr Vijayendra (Biju) Rao, Lead Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank
Dr Julian Ashwin, Post-doctoral Researcher, London Business School

Chair:
Dr Paolo Brunori, Assistant Professorial Research Fellow, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

This seminar presents a framework with which to extend a small set of hand-coding to a much larger set of documents using natural language processing and thus to analyse qualitative data at scale. The seminar shows how to assess the robustness of this approach and demonstrates that it can allow the identification of meaningful patterns in the data that the original hand-coded sample is too small to identify. The approach is applied to data collected among Rohingya refugees and their Bangladeshi hosts in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, to build on work in anthropology and philosophy that distinguishes between ambition and navigational capacity.

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Analysing intergenerational mobility with oriented measures and mobility curves

Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 7 February 12.00pm to 1.00pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speaker:
Professor James Foster, Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, George Washington University 

Chair:
Professor Kirsten Sehnbruch, British Academy Global Professor and Distinguished Policy Fellow, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

This seminar studies oriented measures of intergenerational mobility that differentiate between upward and downward mobility, including headcount ratios that give the incidence of upward (or downward) movements and mobility gaps that gauge the average gain (or loss). We define oriented mobility curves that graphically indicate when mobility comparisons are unambiguous and unanimity partial orderings generated by axiomatically defined classes of oriented measure.

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Dynastic measures of intergenerational mobility

Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 31 January 12.00pm to 1.00pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speaker:
Dr Flaviana Palmisano, Associate Professor of Public Economics, Sapienza University of Rome

Chair:
Dr Pedro Salas-Rojo, Research Officer, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ III

This seminar suggests a simple and flexible criterion to assess relative intergenerational mobility. It accommodates different types of outcomes, such as (continuous) earnings or (discrete and ordinal) education levels, and captures dynastic improvements of such outcomes at different points of the initial distribution. We suggest an application on Indonesia. Using the IFLS data, we match parents observed in 1993 to their children in 2014, providing one of the rare intergenerational mobility analyses based on a long panel in the context of a developing country.

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What Should Fiscal and Social Policy in a Sustainable Economy Look Like?

Hosted by the International Inequalities Institute

Tuesday 31 January 6.45pm to 8.15pm. Online and in-person public event. Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building.

Speakers:
Ed Miliband MP, Shadow Secretary of State of Climate Change and Net Zero
Liam Byrne, Labour MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill
Dr Miatta Fahnbulleh, Chief Executive, New Economics Foundation
Dr Andy Summers, Associate Professor of Law, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Law School

Chair:
Professor Tony Travers, Director of ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ London

The Tribune Group of Members of Parliament is working alongside ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, and other experts to propose new Labour Party policy in three priority areas: active government; climate security; and strong communities. Using research evidence and on-the-ground experience, they are looking at how to shape a greener economy and close socioeconomic, health and wellbeing divides in the UK. This panel will discuss whether wealth redistribution policies can help achieve these goals, and how they might help regenerate the economy and empower communities across the UK in a sustainable way.

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The role of social norms in shaping collective action

Part of the III Inequalities Seminar Series

Tuesday 24 January 12.00pm to 1.00pm. Online and in-person public event. The Marshall Building - MAR 1.09.

Speaker:
Professor Roberto González, Professor of Social Psychology, P. Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC)

Chair:
Dr Armine Ishkanian, Executive Director of AFSEE programme and Associate Professor, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of Social Policy

This seminar will address how social norms shape collective action aimed at social change. Based on Social identity and normative conceptual frameworks, we will discuss why it is important to consider this rather neglected topic in the collective action literature by presenting and discussing recent experimental and longitudinal studies supporting the importance of doing it.