From a historical perspective, the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) until the Wall Street crash of 2008 was brief, but the social changes were far-reaching and resulted in the profound alteration of institutional frameworks of post-socialist societies in Central and East European countries, e.g. Estonia. This book examines the transformation of Estonian society, concentrating on changes in the stratification order. The (re)distribution of the risks and opportunities between different groups in Estonian society, the ‘most neoliberal’ in the European Union, and the perceptions about fairness of the most radical changes in post-socialist world are the main issues of this volume.

Ellu Saar is a professor at the Institute for International and Social Studies, Tallinn University (Estonia). She coordinates the EU project ‘Towards a Lifelong Learning Society in Europe: The Contribution of the Education System’. Her research areas are social stratification and mobility, educational inequalities, and life course studies. She is a member of the Editorial Board of European Sociological Review and of the Steering Committee of the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR).

Leseprobe