Units

Center for Social and Cultural Psychology

The department is responsible for research activities in social and intercultural psychology

Projetcs

Collective Memory

Initiated by Halbwachs (1925, 1950) and Bartlett (1932), the interest for collective memory have recently been revived (Middleton and Edwards, 1997; Penebaker, Paez, and Rimé, 1997; Haas and Jodelet, 1999). Collective memory contributes to fashioning group identity. It is therefore of crucial social and political importance. Memory is likely to be distorted in order to serve identity-related needs (Baumeister, 1997). The history of Belgian colonial action is a highgly relevant in this regard in view of the public controversies that have surrounded Belgian colonial action in Congo. We study how this history is reconstructed in the discourse of former colonials and colonised by focusing on the identity-related dynamics governing those accounts.

REsilience and SOlidarity in intercultural encounters between displaced migrants and host society members: An ego-centered NETwork approach (RESONET)

The RESONET project is a collaborative research project funded by the European network WEAVE « Research Funding Without Borders » (SNF, FNRS, FWO) led by:

Prof. Eva G.T. Green, Université de Lausanne
Prof. Karen Phalet and Dr. Emanuele Politi, KU Leuven
Prof. Laurent Licata and Prof. Antoine Roblain Université Libre de Bruxelles

Because a growing number of people are seeking international protection, it is urgent to examine how their adjustment to the receiving countries can be facilitated. Migration trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees (i.e., displaced migrants) are often marked by broken relationships, loss of social support, and cumulated social exclusions. At the cross-roads of social, cultural and political psychology, this project employs an ego-centric social network approach and examines proximal social environments as spaces enabling resilience of displaced migrants, while concurrently sustaining host society members' engagement in solidarity-based actions in support of displaced migrants. By combining unique data collected within this project with existing data, three research teams in Belgium and Switzerland examine how intercultural ties between displaced migrants and host society members are created and sustained.

Perception of new integration policies for immigrants

Since the beginning of 2000s, the European Union has witnessed a significant change in terms of integration policies for immigrants with the introduction of mandatory integration programs. These policies are characterize by the obligation to successfully pass tests of language and of cultural knowledges in order to access certain rights. This projects examines the perceptions of both the majority and the minorities toward these new integration policies by focusing on the influence of threat feeling and collective emotions. For this purpose, correlational and experimental studies are conducted.