INSIMOWork (in)stability and spatial (im)mobility from the perspective of young people on the move. Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
During this study, researchers from SWPS University investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the professional and personal lives of young adults, including their mobility. Study participants were recruited among persons who had earlier participated in another youth study, which has allowed the researchers to carry out a longitudinal assessment, comparing the lives of young people before, during, and after the pandemic.
Project objectives
The aim of the “Work (in)stability and spatial (im)mobility from the perspective of young people on the move. Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic” project is to empirically examine the processes of meaning-making involving work (in)stability and the spatial (im)mobility in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic among young people. The goal of the project is to better understand how young people (re)evaluate their lives in the present, how they perceive their future, and reflect on the past in relation to the recent pandemic crisis.
Project number: 2021/41/N/HS6/03681
Youth is considered to be a phase of life marked by unpredictability, vulnerability, and reversibility. The COVID-19 pandemic has additionally impacted young people by limiting their mobility, constraining economic stability, and increasing the general feeling of uncertainty. Social researchers emphasize the urgent need for an investigation into the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on different spheres of people’s lives. The largest data sets can be obtained from ongoing longitudinal studies encompassing information on subjects’ life before the pandemic and their experience specific to the pandemic. The INSIMO project meets this need precisely.
This interdisciplinary project brings together the expertise from three research fields, including youth studies, career studies, and mobility studies, to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on different aspects of young people’s lives, such as work, spatial mobility, and everyday opportunities.
Methodology
Social researchers emphasize the urgent need for an investigation into the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on different spheres of people’s lives. The largest data sets can be obtained from ongoing longitudinal studies encompassing information on subjects’ life before the pandemic and their experience specific to the pandemic. The INSIMO project meets this need precisely because its empirical foundations are driven by research that revisits 20 people (born between 1982 and 1995, who hold university degrees and have had international mobility experiences), who took part in three waves of another longitudinal project “Peer Groups and Migration. Education to domestic and foreign labor market transitions of youth: The role of locality, peer group and new media” (2016-2020, National Science Center, Sonata Bis 5, No.2015/18/E/HS6/00147).
Research team
Contact: Dominika Winogrodzka, Principal Investigator
e-mail: dwinogrodzka@swps.edu.pl
Practical application of results
Research re-visits (individual follow-up in-depth interviews, i.e. the fourth meeting with the participants) provide a unique opportunity to assess how participants’ narration, understanding and shaping of different spheres of lives have changed due the impact of a completely different social context – the pandemic. Thanks to the INSIMO project we will be able to explore how the perspectives of young adults (especially those related to work (in)stability and spatial (im)mobility), including their values, aspirations, and identities, have changed over time, in particular in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking at the effects of the COVID-19 crisis, using the temporal orientation and a life-course approach, we will be able to identify risks, vulnerabilities, and inequalities which may affect the lives of young people.