The general aim of the research is to analyse actions of young people as individual actors within the structural and socio-cultural context of Serbia's post-socialist transformation. The emphasis is placed on the potentials and limiting factors of the social environment as well as capacities of young people to act as strategic actors in social transformation. Unlike previous research on the subject, with a predominant focus on perception, attitudes and values of young people, our study will also place emphasis on the everyday life practice of young people in Serbia. In our research, young people are not treated as mere victims of transitional processes, but as powerful agents of social change and a country's greatest human capital. We will present a base for initiating comparative studies in the field as well as the policy influencing process in the country. Several quantitative and qualitative methods will be applied: desktop analysis, opinion poll, and in-depth research. The outcomes of this research project are: to predict future trends in the area of youth participation (economic, social and political) in Serbia as well as in the region; to re-initiate researches of youth in Serbia, to mobilise young researchers and initiate their regional research networking; to provide directions for policy makers both on the local, national and regional level; and to compare relevant research results relating to the youth issue in Balkan countries as well as between the region and the EU.

Centre for Cultural Empirical Studies of South-East Europe, Niš: Social and cultural capital in Serbia

Our research is concerned with the investigation of two main objects: 1) the resources available to Serbian citizens (their economic, social and cultural capital) and the ways these are utilised in everyday life; and 2) the social and symbolic struggles of the carriers of social and cultural capital in everyday life and at the institutional level. The aims of the study include: a) to ascertain how different classes and social groups in Serbia differ in terms of resources (economic and, in particular, social and cultural capital); 2) to reconstruct the strategies which Serbian citizens use in everyday life; c) to construct social space in Serbia; and d) to analyse the social and symbolic struggles of the carriers of different types of capital. The significance of this research derives, on the one hand, from the fact that this field still has not received enough scholarly attention in Serbia. On the other hand, our previous research indicates that the struggles of the carriers of social capital, in particular in its degenerate forms of political capital, and global cultural capital, particularly in the form of academic capital, represents one of the key nodes at which the further development or blockade of social change in Serbia will be decided. To retain the RRPP terminology – "Governance, Social Change and Information Society" – we may argue that the struggle between bad governance (political capital) and informational society (cultural capital) will decide the fate of social change in Serbia.

Center for Media Research, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade: Profession at the crossroads: journalism at the threshold of the information society

Profound and rapid technological, social and economic changes in the communications field fostered by the development of ICTs have an enormous impact on the traditional media practices all over the world. In the Western Balkans, these changes are happening in the transitional, post-conflict context, where the media still have not achieved the full potential as a watchdog of democracy, which makes them even more fragile and potentially vulnerable if the opportunities of new developments are not used in the public interest. The key purpose of our research is to examine the current socio-economic, technological and educational background of journalism in Serbia, important to understand the basis of their potential response to challenges of both global socio-technological and local socio-economic transition developments. Response to those challenges will determine the profession’s role and future in Serbia and quality of public communication in information society. Looking into future, journalists are to be seen at the long term as a potential looser, as a "technological surplus", because their role of professional communicators has being taken over by other non-professional individuals and groups. Supply of information is provided by numerous forums, blogs, social networks and "people's journalism". It seems that journalists in Serbia are neither aware of the main characteristics of this fundamental upheaval, nor prepared for it. Their average socio-economic and educational status is disappointing, and due to political disputes in the last decade of the 20th century, they are divided into three associations, thus even more weakened as a profession.

Argument Agency, Belgrade: Whether Serbian employee's work values are drivers for positive social change or social crisis?

We intend to examine whether Serbian employees' work values are drivers of positive social change or social crisis, by investigating the systems of work value orientations among full-time employees of the Serbian local public, for-profit and non-profit sector and estimating their work value systems ability to influence positive social change or social crisis. The first reason for the study is a series of theoretical observations of social changes in Serbia and Western Balkans that have brought insight that political, social and economic change in the Western Balkans will not happen without transformation of the work and the culture of work. The second reason is that Serbia suffers from the low work discipline and productivity, and difficulties competing in world markets. At the same time, Serbia needs to integrate in EU and globalised world market. We therefore explore characteristics of Serbian employees' work values systems, to discover which of the examined work value orientations are drivers of positive social change and which are not, and whether work value orientations among employees of three sectors are different and to what extent. Our project is going to contribute to the efforts aimed at social changing in the area of work values in the Serbia and the Western Balkans. The research findings will be transmitted to think tanks, institutions and government officials responsible for the labour policy as well as the local leaders and politicians, aimed at generating work values that meet the transition challenges.

Institute for Educational Research, Belgrade: Images of educational change in Serbia: reflecting on the past, envisioning the future

After the political and social changes in Serbia underwent in 2000, comprehensive educational reform initiatives begun at all levels. These were conceived as efforts to continuously change the Serbian education system in line with the EU's policy towards the realisation of the Lisbon agenda. However, the transitional period (2000-2010) in Serbia was marked by discontinuities in educational reform initiatives in terms of strategic directions, policies and practices. Underlying this study is the assumption that these discontinuities may have: 1) diminished the overall effectiveness of reform initiatives, and 2) had a negative impact on motivation and change capacity of key stakeholders. At the moment, there is renewed interest in educational change in Serbian society. Therefore, reflections on the lessons learnt may provide a useful base for leading the future change processes to a more effective, efficient and equitable education system. The aim of our research is to provide a critical understanding of the educational reform process in Serbia from the perspective of key stakeholders (students, parents, teachers, school principals, policy makers, educational researchers). By putting reform into perspective, the study addresses the question how key stakeholders perceive educational changes that were introduced in the transitional years, and how they envision the future of educational change. In part one of the study, images of past educational reform initiatives will be elicited from the key stakeholders. These insights will be used in the second part of the study to inform and contribute collaborative development of future change scenarios. Finally, in the third part of the study, scenario evaluation will be performed in conversation with stakeholders.

Institute of Economic Sciences, Belgrade: Macroeconomic analysis and empirical evaluation of active labor market policies in Serbia 

Serbia's transition process began in 2001 with a general reform programme aimed to foster market economy. However, the initial reforms did not produce positive results in the field of employment, which experiences a continuous decline, falling to only 1.9 million employed persons in 2009. Positive reforms effects on economic growth throughout the period 2001-2008 were not translated into job creation, and since the beginning of economic crisis in 2008, unemployment levels have risen steadily reaching almost 0.8 million persons today. Global strategies for reduction of unemployment include Active labour market policies (ALMP) as an important tool, but overall employment policy and ALMP in Serbia have not been defined explicitly and embedded in a sustainable political framework until 2005. In recent years, the Serbian government has shown a commitment to improve employment prospects. The strategies on Poverty Reduction, Employment and Youth Development, the 2006 national MDG Report, and National employment strategy for the period of 2005-2010 emphasise public employment services as most important and most effective ALMPs. Efforts made by Serbian Government to fight unemployment have still not resulted with satisfactory allocation of funds in ALPM, which in 2009 equalled only 0.1% of GDP compared to EU average of 0.76%. Despite quality improvement in the way of defining strategies for fostering employment, there is still no comprehensive research in Serbia in the field of the net-evaluation of active and passive labour market policies. In this project we will create a model for macroeconomic evaluation of ALMP with a goal of predicting best possible effects to society for the money invested. We believe that good research which could estimate the real net value of ALMP could help increase share of ALMP in Serbia's GDP to at least 0.25% and so significantly reduce current extremely high levels of unemployment.

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad: Media discourse of poverty and social exclusion

Our research intends to provide a comprehensive analysis of media representations and mediated articulations of social inequalities in Serbian society. Its relevance lies in the specific challenge Serbian society faces, in which ideological and identity debates - ex-Yugoslav wars and war crimes, cooperation with the ICTY, the issue of Kosovo and EU accession - overshadow other crucial societal issues or lead to their formulation following ideological matrix from the recent past. In the country in which 7.9% of the population lives under the absolute poverty line, and in which more than half of the population experiences some form of deprivation, the question of social cohesion, social ex/inclusion and poverty represents one such issue. Our project draws on the view that mass media have the potential to act either as facilitators of dialogue, leading to social change or, in the opposite direction, as a key force for preserving the status quo. In contemporary societies, the concept of poverty is being replaced by the concept of social exclusion - a complex, multidimensional issue that includes not only economic deprivation, but also limitations in access to labour market, educational and health services. In this sense, exclusion is strongly related to a lack of participation and representation, which in modern times is achieved primarily through mass media. For that reason, the overall objective of the research is to deconstruct Serbian media discourse about poverty.

Institute for Sociological Research, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade: Public participation in environmental decision-making: the case of Bor and Pancevo

The research subject is citizen participation in the decision-making process at the local level as one of the basic aspects of developing new democratic governance in Serbia. The research aim is to determine the main causes of low public participation and to define the main obstacles to that effect in both institutional and actors' perspective. The novelty of this research is the focus on environmental issues in specific "hot spots" in Serbia. This choice is based on the assumption that case studies as social "experiments" offer the best conditions to examine complex social issues. The main research question is why public participation is very low despite favourable legislative opportunities even in cases when citizens are affected directly and personally, i.e. when their (families', children's') health is endangered directly. The research examines two towns, Pancevo and Bor, as case studies. They share serious environmental problems, but they have also diverse local socio-economic contexts that might determine differences in public articipation. Our analysis would be informed by data collected through questionnaire research and in-depth interviews. Research outputs could be useful for environmental capacity building in Serbia, necessary for the upcoming EU accession process. The case study approach allows us to expect even more specific results that would be policy relevant in chosen localities. On top of that, the research might contribute to regional networking (Bor and Pancevo belongs to different regions in Serbia) in dealing with public participation in local governance, which is rather neglected in fragmented Serbian society.