Tsocho Zlatkov, born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1956. Ph.D. from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia. Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia.
Visiting Grant Scholar (1 September 2003 – 30 November 2003)
INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY PATTERNS IN THE PERIOD OF CRUCIAL TRANSFORMATION: THE BULGARIAN CASE (1977 – 1997)
During my stay at NIAS, I finished a paper I had started before my arrival and wrote two new chapters for a book. One of them built on the application I elaborated during my stay at NIAS and looked at inter-groups movements. Using literature obtained and read at NIAS, I began revising work I had done on the dynamics of the parameters of inter-generation mobility and openness of groups and structures. Meetings with Dutch colleagues helped me to clarify the picture of development of social mobility studies, and contributed to a better understanding of the meaning of some methods for analysis mobility data. I was able to develop my research in four main directions: (i) I compared and synchronized the methodological assumptions of my work with dominant contemporary approaches; (ii) enriched and modernized a set of analytical tools to analyses mobility data. (iii) developed my own analytical tools; (iv) accumulated a rich collection of literature containing among other things plentiful data on studies of social mobility. My achievements lay in the up-dating, deepening and enriching of my analysis. I am now more confident about the conceptual scheme, the analytical tools used, and the results of the work, which will appear in an English translation. Overall, my stay at NIAS enhanced my theoretical and methodological knowledge in the fields that I work in, and will therefore be very significant for my further development as a researcher.