Maria BrandénResearcher, Docent

About me

Maria Brandén has a PhD in Sociological Demography and is employed as a researcher at the Department of Sociology. She teaches the undergraduate course “Samhälle och befolkningsfrågor”. In addition to her employment at the Department, she is a lecturer at the Institute for Analytical Sociology at Linköping University. Maria Brandén is currently involved in four research projects at the Department.

1. She is project investigator of a project funded by Vetenskapsrådet, which concerns how contextual factors matter for social mobility, ”Äpplen som faller långt från träden – barndomens sociala kontext och dess betydelse för social mobilitet”.
2. She does research on geographical distance between children and non-resident parents within the project “Shared Physical Custody in Sweden: Development, determinants, stability and outcomes of a new form of family organization” (PI: Jani Turunen).
3. She is responsible for a work package on immigrants’ educational trajectories within the large-scale research project “Immigrant Trajectories: Geographical Mobility, Family Careers, Employment, Education, and Social Insurance in Sweden, 1990-2016” (PI: Bo Malmberg). Finally, she (4) does research on neighbourhood polarization within a large-scale project called “Lyckliga gatan? Geografisk polarisering och social sammanhållning i dagens Sverige” (PI: Bo Malmberg). Selected outlet during 2018 includes participation in the 2018 annual meeting of the Population Association of America; writing a report on neighbourhood effects for LO which she presented at one of their seminars.

Research projects

Ongoing

Completed

A family decision? Population studies of parental leave at the gendered workplace

The project will provide understanding of how the family decision to take leave is conditional on expectations of the gendered workplace. It may provide new insights into how policy-making may benefit from a shift from the individual and couple to the workplace.

Dynamics of immigrant integration in unemployment, poverty, and segregation

This project applies a life course perspective to study socioeconomic inequalities in terms of unemployment and income poverty dynamics between second generation immigrants and ancestral Swedes.

Migrant Trajectories

Migrant Trajectories is a research programme that explores the life trajectories of migrants from their arrival in Sweden to the present, focusing on the five main life domains – geographical residence and housing, family formation, labour market participation, educational careers, and social security – and the interrelationships between them.