First international workshop of EVS 2017, 10-11 October 2019, Tbilisi (Georgia)

In the recent years, Europe was exposed to remarkable dynamics of simultaneously growing together and falling apart. On the one hand, the traffic of goods, services, and labor between European states and regions increased, ongoing technological developments induce transformations in the working life, the European Union was enlarged as a geographical, political and social unit, and cultural barriers seem to be declining. On the other one, strong social, economic and political forces are threatening to pull Europe apart. The economic crisis, the new migration flows and the humanitarian emergency following in the wake of the refugee crisis affected the European countries quite differently. These differentiated developments have challenged intra-European solidarity and activated different mechanisms related to questions of security, responsibility for border controls and for the management of the crisis. Euro-skepticism, populism and right-wing extremism are on the rise in most European countries. At the same time, the continued, increasing immigration from outside Europe challenges the “Fortress Europe” and raises questions of solidarity, social cohesion, inter-ethnic and inter-religious interactions. Finally, increasing levels of social inequality across the European countries and growing precariousness in European labor markets seems to stoke resentment of national elites and fuel the authoritarian and populist movements.

How do all these events affect the Europeans’ values? And how can researchers measure and compare human values in an adequate and meaningful way?

The European Values Study is organizing an international workshop to address these research questions in collaboration with GORBI (Georgian Opinion Research Business International). Alongside selected proposals, the program is enriched by the keynote contributions given by: Professor Bart Meuleman (Coordinator of the Centre for Sociological Research at KU Leuven, and President of the European Survey Research Association); Professor David Voas (Head of Department of Social Science at University College London, and member of the Executive Committee of the European Values Study); Professor Christian Welzel (Chair in Political Culture Research, Center for the Study of Democracy at Leuphana University, and Vice-President of World Values Survey Association).

We welcome proposals studying the Europeans’ values from a comparative perspective and making use of the second pre-release of EVS2017 (which will make data available for about 30 countries) on its own or in conjunction with previous waves of EVS or WVS. Dataset and documentation concerning the first pre-release, which includes 16 countries, are already available for download. Up-to-date information about the pre-releases can be found on the EVS website.

In addition to substantive proposals on European values and attitudes with a focus on multilevel and longitudinal research questions on topics such as (but not limited to) social solidarity, social cohesion, national and European identity, we are interested also in papers investigating validity and cross-cultural comparability of values and attitudes. In particular, contributions on the issue of measurement equivalence are highly appreciated.

Please, send an abstract of maximum 250 words to the Scientific Committee of the Workshop (evs.georgia2019@gmail.com) by June 22. Proposals should clearly describe the aims of the study and the methodology applied, but do not have to include results. Decisions about acceptance will be made by 12th July 2019.

The Local Organizing Committee at GORBI, Tbilisi, Georgia

Lucy Flynn, Rian Hulscher , Merab Pachulia

The Scientific Committee of the Workshop

Morten Frederiksen (Aalborg Universitet, Copenhagen, Denmark); Vera Lomazzi (GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne, Germany); Gergely Rosta (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary); Natalia Soboleva (Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, NRU Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia)