MATTIAS BENGTSSON is Associate Professor of Sociology. He received his PhD in sociology from the University of Gothenburg in 2008 with the dissertation ‘The individual is clocking in: A sociological illumination of work, the trade union and pay’, in which processes of individualization in Swedish working life is studied. He has participated in several research projects that concern labour market policy, transnational trade union cooperation, social class, welfare policy and individuals’ meaning-making at the entry of retirement.
Specialist Fields
Main research fields are labour market and welfare policies, industrial relations, and sociology of retirement. Theoretical departures in Bengtsson's research are class perspectives, existential sociology, and political sociology and political economy approaches.
Bengtsson has among other things published texts on the transformation of Swedish welfare and labour market policies, a comparative analysis of activation policies in Sweden and Denmark, conditions for transnational trade union cooperation, the meaning of work and retirement, and social class and ideological orientations.
Current research
Bengtsson leads the project ‘Activation strategies in Swedish welfare policy 1990-2015’ (funded by the Swedish Research Council). The results of the project is important for a fuller knowledge of main changes in Swedish welfare policies in times of mass unemployment and austerity. A recent publication, co-authored with Kerstin Jacobsson, is found in Sociologisk Forskning: http://du.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1230165/FULLTEXT01.pdf. Moreover, the project contributes to an understanding of how Swedish labour market policies have changed in relation to other European countries, as seen in the article ”Labour Market Policy under Conditions of Permanent Austerity: Any Sign of Social Investment?”, Social Policy & Administration 51(2), co-authored with Caroline de la Porte and Kerstin Jacobsson: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/spol.12292/full
Moreover, Bengtsson recently participated in the research project ‘Towards a New Everyday: Individuals' Meaning-Making at the Entry of Retirement from a Social Inequality Perspective’ (funded by the Kamprad Family Foundation). See for instance the article (co-authored with Marita Flisbäck) "On leaving work as a calling; retirement as an existential imperative", International Journal of Ageing and Later Life (2017): http://www.ep.liu.se/ej/ijal/2017/v11/i1/a02/ijal_16-291.pdf A forthcoming publication is the chapter "Work as a Calling" in the anthology Work Orientations: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Findings (forthcoming, Routledge).
Besides this, in 2014-17 Bengtsson participated in the research project ‘Conditions and obstacles for trade union cooperation in Europe. A comparative study of countries and sectors’ (funded by The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences). A recent publication, co-authored with Patrik Vulkan, is found in Nordic Journal of Industrial Relations: https://tidsskrift.dk/njwls/article/view/109543/158908
Teaching
Bengtsson primarily teaches in areas such as labour and employment relations and European labour market relations. He is course coordinator and lecturer in a course on social inequality and life conditions. He has also teached continually in other sociology and social psychology courses, as well as on programmes such as the Programme in Human Resource Management and Labour relations, the Teacher Education Programme and the European Studies Programme.
Miscellaneous
Bengtsson participates in the Centre for Ageing and Health (AgeCap) at the University of Gothenburg which is a research centre for cooperation between five research groups from different disciplines. The overall aim of the centre is to perform coordinated studies of capability in aging.
Bengtsson participated in 2011-2014 in the research project “LOCALISE: Local Worlds of Social Cohesion” that is financed by the EU Seventh Framework Programme (http://www.localise-research.eu/) and has participated in the Nordic research network the Nordic Network for Critical Realism.
