Abstract:

In Sociology, societal challenges are often phrased as societal problems. Most of these societal problems are related to the question of how we can deliver certain public goods. We generally assume that people value important public goods such as clean air and drinking water, democracy, law and order, equal opportunities, and want to avoid public bads. However, we are currently in the challenging situation where some politicians and a substantial number of citizens seem to contest that some of these ‘goods’ are indeed ‘public goods’. Ignoring or mitigating climate change is an example. Similarly, the public good of ‘living in a democracy’ was long taken for granted until recently, yet the increasing popularity of populist right-wing parties like the AfD, Putin’s hybrid war and Trump’s recent blitz to expand his power, suggests that our democracy is threatened. These are challenging problems. Furthermore, it is important to realize that societal challenges are often interconnected and I will illustrate this while trying to answer the question whether we can expect an increase of immigration in Europe.
To answer questions related to societal problems, rigorous sociological research is required. The availability of high-quality data in our sociological toolbox, and an adequate linking of sociological questions to appropriate data and methods is crucial. In my view sociology as a discipline has made big steps both in data quality and variety of data. This has improved the quality of sociological research substantially. High quality longitudinal datasets, geodata, combining social science and molecular genetic data, experiments within surveys, and increasing availability of full register data, offer unique opportunities to better answer research questions related to societal problems. I will provide several examples and some of them are related to immigration and social integration.