About InGRID

InGRID is a network of distributed, but integrating European research infrastructures. A research infrastructure is a facility or platform that provides the scientific community with resources and services to conduct top-level research in their respective fields.

InGRID research infrastructures serve the social sciences community, that wants to make an evidence-based contribution to a European policy strategy of inclusive growth. This research community focuses on social in/exclusion, vulnerability-at-work and related social and labour market policies from a European comparative perspective. Key tools in this social science research are all types of data: statistics on earnings, administrative social data, labour market data, surveys of quality of life or working conditions, and policy indicators. 

For the period 2017-2021, the infrastructure has received funding for another 4 year project by the European H2020-programme: the InGRID-2 project. As a continuation of the launch of the infrastructure in 2013, this project will work on the infrastructure as an advanced research infrastructure. The full project title is "InGRID-2 Integrating Research Infrastructure for European expertise on Inclusive Growth from data to policy". To improve and open the research infrastructures, the InGRID-2 project built this online portal and organises several activities. 

Via visiting grants, the project provides transnational access to 16 European data centres of the infrastructure. Short and long-term visiting grants allow researchers to experiment with and work on key data sets and tools within a context of mutual knowledge exchange and cross-fertilisation. In addition, virtual data access is organised by LIS (LWS microdata) and UEssex (EUROMOD), which can be used or consulted via the InGRID project website. The project creates furthermore opportunities for networking, dialogue and knowledge exchange on the InGRID infrastructure through summer schools, expert workshops, data forums, special interest groups, and stakeholder conferences.

Last but not least the consortium partners will conduct in the project methodological research and technological studies to improve the InGRID infrastructure. Joint research is organised with the aim to integrate, harmonise and optimise existing tools and methods within the different research domains and to create new tools to fill existing data gaps. Topics in the field of working conditions and vulnerability, among others, cover data on collective bargaining and minimum wages, new types of (web)data and its use, microsimulations in comparative working conditions research. Research in the field of poverty and living conditions, among others, contain the extension of IPOLIS and EUROMOD, data on welfare services, demographic factors and poverty indicators. A better measurement and understanding of vulnerable groups and related state policies are expected research impacts. The results and publications of these joint research activities are published online.

 

Inclusive growth

Inclusive growth is about growth that generates decent jobs, gives opportunities to all segments of society, especially excluded groups, and distributes the income and non-income gains from prosperity more equally across society. Europe 2020 is the EU’s growth strategy for the current decade. As part of this strategy, the EU wants to create more and better jobs and enhance social inclusion. Targets have been set to reach high levels of employment and to combat poverty. Despite the fact that the European economy is showing mild signs of improvement, the crisis is not over yet and all over Europe, people carry the consequences. The policy challenges related to the European strategy of inclusive growth remain thus major. European policy-oriented research can and must deliver useful contributions to tackle these challenges.

Partners

19 European expert research partners take part in the InGRID project. The partners are from 14 European Union Member States and include universities and research institutes that analyse the InGRID topics-of-interest from a broad perspective, as well as in a very detailed manner. For more information on the partners involved, please consult the project website.

The InGRID-2 project will be led and managed by HIVA - Research Institute for Work and Society in Belgium.

Acknowledgements

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730998.
Disclaimer notice - The contents of this website reflect the view of the InGRID-2 project. The views expressed in the website do not necessarily reflect the views of the EC.

Part of the content of this e-portal is retrieved from the EDAC website, which has been created in the RECWOWE project.