GUTS is a collaboration of researchers from seven universities and a wide variety of disciplines that share one mission: to understand how young people grow up in a complex society.

The key-question that the GUTS program aims to answer is: how do young people with varying opportunities grow up in an increasingly complex society? And what are the main causes for differences in contributing to society?

GUTS investigate how young people’s brain and (social) behavior develop over a period of ten years. The project connects these patterns of neurobiological and behavioral development to the circumstances someone grows up in: what access to educational opportunities, social networks and societal norms does someone have?

And what makes some adolescents deviate from expected societal norms and engage in antisocial behavior? In other words, how do nature and nurture interact during growing up to adulthood? And what impact does your starting point in life have on where you will end up in society?

Project period: Jan 2023 - Sept 2027

Funded by: Gravitation programme by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW)

Immigrants in general, and Muslims in particular, have been found to be more religious than non-migrants in European societies. In public and scholarly discourses, this high level of religiosity is often conceived of as a barrier to immigrant integration.

However, 20 years of large-scale survey research have yielded contradictory findings regarding the question of how religion is related to immigrant integration and how immigrant religion changes as a consequence of migration and integration. Fenella Fleischmann argues that these nonconclusive results are due to a limited conceptualisation of immigrant religion in survey-based research, which has too narrowly focused on religiousness, i.e., the frequency of religious practices and the subjective importance of religion, but largely ignored religious cognition, i.e., the more literal or symbolic ways in which individuals reason about religion.

The RECOGNITION project takes an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural comparative approach and proposes to transform this line of research with a systematic investigation of religious cognition as explanation for different domains of immigrant integration that is independent of religiousness.

Project period: Jan 2023 - Dec 2027

Funded by: NWO Vidi

PACES offers a groundbreaking approach to studying and understanding migration decisions and examines how this knowledge can improve migration policies. The project focuses on two aspects: the factors influencing migration decisions and the mechanisms underlying migration policies. By combining theoretical and empirical insights from various disciplines, PACES investigates the interactions between migration decisions, policies, and social transformation, including economic, political, demographic, and technological changes.

Based on data from Algeria, Ethiopia, Italy, Libya, Slovakia, and Spain, PACES develops a model identifying the conditions that shape migration decisions and life stages. The project also analyzes policy assumptions on migration and their impact. PACES evaluates how EU and national migration policies benefit from research on migration decisions, providing insights for more effective models. Through collaboration with policymakers, stakeholders, and migrants, PACES aims to achieve maximum scientific, political, and social impact.

Coordinator: Leiden University

Project period: March 2023 - June 2026

Funded by: European Commission Horizon Europe programme

EqualStrength investigates structural and cumulative discrimination, outgroup prejudice, and hate crimes against ethnic, racial, and religious minorities from a cross-setting and intersectional perspective. Using innovative methods—field experiments, secondary survey data, policy analysis, and targeted data collection—it incorporates minority perspectives on discrimination.

This approach addresses five objectives: uncovering structural discrimination in Europe, particularly for Muslim, Roma, and Black minorities; assessing systemic prejudice across life domains; analyzing policies contributing to discrimination; documenting minority experiences and coping strategies; and examining intersections of race, ethnicity, religion, and other inequalities.

EqualStrength offers three contributions: shifting focus from individuals to a family perspective; highlighting cumulative, structural, and intersectional disadvantages across settings and groups; and adopting a multi-actor, multi-level lens, addressing individuals, organizations, and institutions to provide a comprehensive understanding of discrimination.

Project period: April 2023 - March 2026

Funded by: European Commission Horizon Europe programme

Technological advancements and automation pose a critical question: Should education focus on occupation-specific (vocational) skills, or do general qualifications better prepare students for rapidly changing labor markets? While vocational training facilitates smooth school-to-work transitions, its long-term career impacts remain unclear, especially in evolving labor markets.

CAREER investigates how changing labor demands affect individual careers, hypothesizing that vocational graduates face late-career disadvantages due to limited labor market mobility as job requirements evolve. This comparative project examines six countries—Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.

Using computational methods on extensive job vacancy data, CAREER tracks labor market changes over time. High-quality panel data reveal how vocational and general graduates' careers unfold in shifting contexts. Interviews and experiments explore mechanisms behind career outcomes. By analyzing full career trajectories, CAREER provides valuable insights into education's role in adapting to labor market changes and offers guidance for future-proof education policies.

Project period: Feb 2021 - Jan 2026

Funded by: European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant

Which body weight is considered normal and socially accepted in modern societies? Do body-weight norms differ across countries? How do they affect the psychological well-being of those who conform and deviate?

Answers to these questions are highly relevant across the globe, as the obesity epidemic continues to spread throughout Western countries, while underweight – especially among women – emerges as a growing problem in Asian countries. This renders large population groups at risk of declines in psychological well-being and further weight gain or loss.

Research suggests that body-weight norms play an important role. Yet, little is known about how body-weight norms differ between countries, how body-weight norms differ across social groups, and how body-weight norms affect individual-level outcomes.

The project will be the first to measure body-weight norms, their associations with individual outcomes, and the key mechanisms behind these associations – sanctions, pressure, and internalization – using internationally comparative and representative samples. A triangulation of descriptive and explanatory methods will provide an in-depth understanding of how and why body-weight norms vary between and within countries and how these norms affect individual body-weight satisfaction, weight gain and loss, psychological well-being, and self-esteem.

This knowledge is societally relevant because it contributes to understanding why deviations from healthy body weight spread unequally between and within countries, and to assessing the mental health burden resulting from cultural body-weight norms.

Project period: Jan 2020 - Dec 2025

Funded by: NWO VENI

Research shows that employers discriminate against ethnic minorities in the labor market, often focusing on job seekers' characteristics like skills and experience to explain this bias. However, existing studies have overemphasized why discrimination exists, neglecting how it arises within workplaces. Discrimination is a socially constructed process embedded in institutional environments, yet its organizational and national context remains underexplored.

This project hypothesizes that organizations and national institutions shape opportunities for discrimination, influencing its occurrence across different settings. By examining employers, organizations, and countries, the research assesses the institutional factors making ethnicity decisive in hiring and promotion decisions. It addresses calls to “bring the firm back in” by studying how workplace and national contexts shape employer behavior.

Including data from the Netherlands, UK, Germany, and Spain, the study uses organizational data, vignette studies, and experiments to develop actionable insights for reducing employer discrimination through evidence-based policymaking.

Project period: Dec 2018 - Dec 2025

Funded by: NWO VIDI