Studies of Transition States and Societies

Studies of Transition States and Societies (STSS) is a fast-growing open-access interdisciplinary journal for the study of transition societies. Published since 2009, it is already indexed in Scopus, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), EBSCO, ProQuest, the Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL) and International Political Science Abstracts (IPSA).

Published and funded by the School of Governance, Law and Society and Institute of International Social Studies at Tallinn University, STSS is fully open access, does not ask for article processing charges from authors, yet provides free language editing to accepted articles. Our goal is to contribute not only to scholarly debates but also promote good practices in open science, while staying independent, uncompromising and maintaining high academic standards and ethical conduct.

STSS emphasises life course research with a specific focus on the intersection between the labour market and education studies. We prioritise research that dissects life course transitions, providing insights into the complex processes shaping individual trajectories in education, employment, and their interrelations with other domains such as family, health, migration and mobility. Our interest in the labour market extends to precarious work, the vulnerable conditions of individuals, informality theory and the informal practices and relations that encompass various aspects of labour markets and labour relations. The educational dimension emphasises inequalities in skill formation, education attainment and lifelong learning.

We welcome different methodological perspectives. We especially value international comparative research and research on social changes and transformations. One of our aims is to examine how transitions in technology, demography and environmental policy influence educational and labour market outcomes, contributing to theoretical and methodological debates in sociology, anthropology, human geography, public policy, and related disciplines.

We encourage unorthodox and unconventional interdisciplinary research, prioritising studies that integrate analytical theory with rigorous empirical analysis to foster a cumulative and generalisable understanding of the social world.

We particularly welcome studies that explore regional and national contexts within the geographical area extending from Central and Eastern Europe to Central Asia (i.e., approximately overlapping with the former state socialist world), and that contribute to theoretical and empirical debates on this region. Studies focusing on other parts of the world may be considered if they offer relevant comparisons with our core region. In addition, we highly value research addressing comparative, transnational, and cross-border dynamics in education and employment.

The journal is published annually in June. In addition, collections of articles about a common theme or debate may be published as special issues.

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