The chapter provides an overview of the situation of Ukrainian refugees in the labour markets of Austria, Czechia, Poland, and Slovakia.

CELSI research fellow Sofia Trommlerová published in prestigious journal of American Economic Association an article about The Impact of COVID-19 on Fertility in Spain, which has been struggling with a steadily declining birth rate since 2009 and it also has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe.

CELSI researchers Barbora Holubová, Marta Kahancová, Lucia Kováčová and Adam Šumichrast, along with Lucia Mýtna Kureková and Steffen Torp, worked on a study that examines how the different systems of workers’ representation and industrial relations in Slovakia and Norway facilitate PwD work integration. Taking a social ecosystem perspective, they acknowledge the role of various stakeholders and their interactions in supporting PwD work integration. The paper’s conceptual contribution lies in including social dialogue actors in this ecosystem.

The paper, written by Marta Kahancová and Katarína Staroňová, was published in the European Journal of Industrial Relations. It questions to what extent the export-led growth model, based on foreign direct investment as driver of economic growth, influenced PSWS in Czechia and Slovakia after the 2008–2009 crisis. The paper provides new evidence of the appropriateness of the growth model literature, integrated by consideration of global production chains integration, for understanding PSWS in CEE conditions.

Our CELSI researchers, Monika Martišková, Katarína Lukáčová, and Patrik Gažo, have made a contribution to the latest Thematic Review on Fair Transition Towards Climate Neutrality written by the European Center of Expertise at the European Commission by writing country articles on Czechia and Slovakia.

The article, titled "The impact of immigration and integration policies on immigrant-native labour market hierarchies" uses a longitudinal model based on individual-level EU LFS and country-level DEMIG POLICY and POLMIG databases to explore variation in changes of immigration and integration policies across Western EU member states to study how they are linked to labour market hierarchies in terms of unemployment and employment quality gaps between immigrant and native populations.

Lucia Kováčová, Martin Guzi and Martin Kahanec co-authored the chapter in the book critically exploring how social partners have been involved in designing and adopting job preservation policies responding to the COVID-19 economic crisis in five CEE countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.

Marta Kahancová co-authored the article titled "Power resources and successful trade union actions that address precarity in adverse contexts: The case of Central and Eastern Europe" along with Aurora Trif, Aristea Koukiadaki and Valentina Paolucci.

CELSI researchers Monika Martišková, Pavol Bors, Tibor T Meszmann and Adam Šumichrast contributed to the book with three case studies that address the situation in the Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia.

One of the findings is that the measures implemented during the pandemic were often temporary and did not adopt a gender perspective nor address the specific problems of disadvantaged groups, for example, single mothers and migrant women.