SOLIDUS. Solidarity in European societies: empowerment, social justice and citizenship

The SOLIDUS project directly answers the small or medium-scale focused research projects call for “European societies after the crisis“ (EURO-3-2014). It falls within the broader objectives of the Horizon 2020 “Europe in a changing world: inclusive, innovative and reflective societies” work programme, more specifically under the general call “Overcoming the Crisis: New Ideas, Strategies and Governance Structures for Europe”. The innovative character of this proposal is that it explores conceptually and empirically current and future expressions of European solidarity from an inter-disciplinary approach that integrates views from Sociology, Psychology, Economic Geography, Economy, Philosophy and Public Management. The project is led by Dr. Marta Soler (UB).

The project will make use of such outputs to integrate them with empirical evidences found in a range of social innovation, third sector’s and public management’s practices from a comparative perspective, in which different state and policy sector traditions are considered in reaching an understanding of these drivers and barriers. The added value of this comparative approach is that cross-national and cross-sectorial learning is facilitated, enabling the EU member states, and especially their policymakers and academics, to learn from one another. Moreover, it will help policymakers at the European level to develop policies and instruments that recognise the potential of solidarity to achieve societal goals through available mechanisms of policy innovation while improving the evidence-based character of their policies. Furthermore, the most ambitious moral and normative features, and thus critical, aspects related to solidarity (like social justice) are addressed in the various work packages. To date, such systematic, interdisciplinary and comparative research into solidarity is unique at European level.