On February 1, the HSE Cultural Centre hosted the Student Research Paper Competition award ceremony, and Polina Alekseeva was one of the awarded. With the «Young Russians’ Pathways to Marriage: The Role of Embeddedness» research paper, Polina got the 2nd place in «the best master’s sociological work» nomination.
In the study Polina goes on investigating how young Russians get married. With the second demographic transition and the “great transformation”, individualization and marketization of romantic relationships, the pathway to marriage seems to be reminiscent of a job search. The latter, according to M.Granovetter, is characterized by “the strength of weak ties”. But if the labor market implies mobility and career building, marriage logic denies them—scarcely do people get married in order to get divorced and build “marriage careers”. This controversy makes Granovetter’s theory ambivalent in the marriage search field. So, Polina aims at uncovering the role weak and strong ties play in young Russians’ marriage trajectories.
The article, prepared within the framework of research-project “The Paradox of Interrelation between Religion and Family in Modern Russia (Research grant RSF)”, was published in “Journal of Economic Sociology”, November 2022: link.
