Search

This paper considers migrant parenting as a dynamic project that entails interactions between social class, migration experiences, individual and collective beliefs, and transnational attachments. Previous research has examined migrant parenting predominantly concerning children's social mobility in the immigration country by using the acculturation framework or by comparing migrants with non-migrants. Recently, research has accounted for child rearing in transnational families with an emphasis on gendered parenting and role reversal among parents who take care of their children from a distance. This paper analyses parenting orientations among settled migrants who maintain close connections to their country of origin. Findings from in-depth interviews with mothers from Poland with different class backgrounds who raise their children in Germany highlight their varying migration experiences and structural conditions for child rearing. The analyses show how these mothers engage in building successful migration projects for themselves and their children, albeit with very diverse socio-cultural and economic resources that shape their child rearing, navigating between support of children's accommodation, transnational connections and ethnic identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the push to strengthen European defence cooperation, the topic of whether a European strategic culture is emerging has become widely contested. Since convergence between member states is the key that would unlock the way to a European strategic culture, this paper examines how they perceive crucial aspects of strategic culture and in what aspects they have converged and diverged. This study selected Germany, Poland, and Ireland as cases of the EU-27 member states. It compared the three national strategic cultures in three aspects: strategic environment, cooperation patterns, and strategic goals and means, by conducting a computer-based content analysis of strategic documents and official speeches of high-level national policymakers between 2000 and 2020. This study found that despite the persistent divergence in strategic goals and means, the three countries have shown greater convergence in their perceptions of the strategic environment and that while their preferences on cooperation patterns are largely unchanged, they seem to be accepting the EU as a legitimate and favourable platform for security and defence cooperation. These findings suggest that the prospects for the emergence of a European strategic culture and further developments of the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy are both challenging and promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is concerned with the spatial dimension of the coronavirus crisis and the tensions it created in multilevel governance in the Polish–German border region. Regarding the spatial dimension of the crisis, territoriality is referred to as the political competence to exert control over a national territory and over places particularly affected by the coronavirus crisis and its management – from local hubs of outbreaks to twin cities in border regions facing closed borders. Territoriality was mirrored in the unilateral decisions of the central governments to close national borders in Europe. Considering spatiality as well as the asymmetric multilevel setting of cross-border Polish–German relations, this paper investigates to what extent subnational actors were able to interact in a cross-border sense in this situation. The paper shows the relevance of subnational political authorities and highlights the significance of civil society actors in times of crisis, as they were able to lobby for a less restrictive border management response and helped to hold – merely through digital activities – the web of bilateral relations together. In this light, it may enhance the ability of further research to take a multilevel territorial perspective for a more nuanced picture of the pandemic's effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on research undertaken as part of the EU funded EPPIC project, this paper aims to update and elaborate on the relationship between drug use and offending behaviours by exploring variations within a cross-national sample of drug-experienced young people in touch with criminal justice systems. Adopting a trajectory-based approach, interviews were undertaken with 198 young people aged 15–25 in six European countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Poland, and UK). Data were analysed by applying the Bennett and Holloway categorization of the drugs-crime link, with a focus on the concept of social exclusion as developed by Seddon. Three main types of mechanisms (economic, pharmaceutical, and lifestyles) are used to interpret the data, showing how the relationship between drugs and offending can vary according to type of substances and over time. Furthermore, it can be associated with very different degrees of social exclusion and needs. The results suggest that while economic inequalities still play key roles in explaining drug use and offending, both behaviours can originate from a state of relative deprivation, resulting from the contradictions inherent in 'bulimic societies' that raise aspirations and desires while providing young people scarce opportunities for self-realisation and social recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1989 the building of new Polish-German relations has been carried out in the dimensions of both time (historical reconciliation) and space (reintegration eastern and western parts of Europe). This determines their fundamental importance for contemporary Europe. This article presents an analysis of Polish-German relations from the perspective of issue salience. The source base of this paper comprises Addresses by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs (AMFAs), i.e. annual speeches given by foreign ministers presenting the major goals of Poland's foreign policy. It makes it possible to adopt a long-term perspective (1990-2018). The quantitative analysis was based on the rules of the Comparative Manifesto Project. Its results allowed the author to determine the position of Germany in Poland's foreign policy; to identify the major periods in mutual relations; to indicate the main concepts of the Polish governments concerning Polish-German relations; and to specify the major problematic issues in mutual relations. The performed analysis shows that relations with Germany play the dominant role in the structure of Polish foreign policy, and particularly European policy. This stands in stark contrast to the ambivalence of the Polish political elites, especially those on the right side of the political spectrum, towards the western neighbour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Depression is highly prevalent worldwide and generates significant economic burden. Despite this, there is still insufficient information on hospitalisation costs related to depression. Therefore, this paper presents a comparison of costs of inpatient care of depression among patients hospitalised in 2014 in Kiel (Germany) and in Poznan (Poland). Methods: The retrospective study was conducted from October 2015 to May 2017 in Kiel and in Poznan and concerned all patients (n = 548 and eventually included n = 444; 334 in Kiel and 110 in Poznan) hospitalised in these centres. Results: The annual cost of inpatient care of patients hospitalised due to depression in 2014 was EUR x ¯ = EUR 9397.21 (total EUR 313,8667.2) in Kiel and EUR x ¯ = EUR 2962.90 (total EUR 325,919.38) in Poznan. In Kiel, the most frequently prescribed medicine was mirtazapine while in Poznan it was venlafaxine. Conclusions: The 3-fold difference in average costs of hospitalisation might result from differences in funding of mental health care which in Poland needs urgent amendment. Besides, mental health care was underfunded in Poznan. In general, treatment was comprehensive in both centres. Non-pharmacological treatment, however, was more comprehensive in Kiel. The cost of inpatient care of depression was very high both in Kiel and Poznan. Inpatient care of depression is long-lasting, but a reduction in the length of hospital stay seems to be possible. Hospital stay is the main part of costs of inpatient care of depression. Treatment of depression should be comprehensive, but differences e.g. in pharmacotherapy used are possible between hospitals and/or countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The information presented here is based on 174 sites; it is a result of a detailed historical collection revision of materials from Silesia and also the first comprehensive paper after the early German and Polish compilations. Though our work includes both quantitative and qualitative updates, it is neither exhaustive nor complete. It is very likely that many finds have not yet been reported to scientific institutions or museums, or else remain in private collections. The localities concerned are dominated by remains found under or within alluvial deposits of the last glaciation or in the context of loess sediments. Most of the documented remains are from the Late Pleistocene. Cold-adapted members of steppe-tundra faunal assemblages, such as Mammuthus primigenius, Equus ferus, Coelodonta antiquitatis, Rangifer tarandus, Ovibos moschatus, and Bison priscus dominate. Most artiodactyls were found in alluvial sediments, in bogs or swamps, while carnivores are represented only by isolated remains. The location of faunal assemblages and isolated finds shows the importance of river valleys as migrations routes. Silesia stretches along the Odra River, which runs in a roughly south-north direction, and connects the Sudety Mts and the Głubczyce Plateau with the wide, open lowlands of Eastern Germany and Western Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the urban context and spatial manifestations of the construction of shared heritage sites resulting from cross-border interactions in Polish–German border towns. A comparison of the three border towns of Frankfurt (Oder)/Słubice, Guben/Gubin and Görlitz/Zgorzelec offers insights into the relationship between the creation of transnational urban places and the contrasting spatial circumstances in the urban environments of the border towns. The greater permeability of the border in the Schengen period from 2007 has intensified cross-border activity, and actors from both sides of the river have cooperated to create new shared places, most prominent among these are heritage sites. These new transnational heritage sites emphasise different aspects of the past, including valorising ‘neutral’ heritage, rediscovering sites of trauma and victimhood, or reinventing existing sites. While divisions persist, rooted as much in the burden of the past as current socio-economic asymmetries, some evidence is coming to light of the forging of shared heritage sites linked to narratives of reconciliation and mutual recognition. The creation of shared heritage is a fragile process which depends on contingent urban conditions. This paper draws attention to the need for heritage sites to evolve gradually and with significant participation from civil activists if they are to gain local transnational significance. Moreover, heritage sites only have transformative potential when they become integrated in the urban environment as active settings for everyday life which transcend commemorative or tourist purposes alone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As compensation for their disempowerment in the process of European integration, national parliaments have been provided with various new rights and powers since the 1990s, culminating in the current provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. This paper argues, however, that rather than simply re-enhancing traditional powers of national parliaments, these reforms imply ideas of a new type of parliamentary democracy in Europe. It identifies three different roles for national parliaments in the EU: preventing rather than shaping legislation (gatekeeping role), cooperating with other parliaments and supranational institutions (networking role), and adopting a uniform mode control of government across all party groups (unitary scrutiniser role). All these roles require a significant deviation from the standard role legislatures usually play in European parliamentary democracies. The paper briefly explores how national parliaments in two ‘old’ (France, Germany) and one ‘new’ (Poland) member state fulfil these three new roles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reviews seasonal migration from Poland to Germany from the perspective of gender. The main lenses used are the participation in this migration by individuals as members of families, the informal recruitment mechanisms that bring new migrants on board, and the legal environment. The paper argues that the selection of a migrant by the family depends importantly on the costs of migration for the family, and shows how this consideration bears on the choice of women as seasonal migrants. In addition, the paper argues that the patterns of recruitment are gender-specific, explains why women recruit new migrants in a manner which differs from that of men, and assesses the impact of the underlying legal environment on the differential participation of women and men. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on the diversity in patients' experience of biomedicine and contrasts it with the normative view characteristic of health professionals. Ethnographic fieldwork among Polish migrant women in London, Barcelona and Berlin included interviews about their experiences with local healthcare and health professionals. Themes drawn from the narratives are differences between the cities in terms of communication between patients and health professionals, respect for patients' choices and dignity, attitudes to pregnancy and birth (different levels of medicalization), and paediatric care. It is argued that patients continuously negotiate among their own views and expectations based on previous experiences and knowledge from personal communication; internet forums and publications; and the offer of medical services in the countries of their settlement. Patients experience pluralism of therapeutic traditions within and outside bio-medicine. In turn, representatives of bio-medicine are rarely aware of other medical practices and beliefs and this leads to various misunderstandings. By highlighting the pluralism of medical practices in European countries and the increasing mobility of patients, this case study has useful implications for medical anthropologists and health professionals in a broader Western context, such as raising sensitivity to different communication strategies and a diversity of curing traditions and expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns social relations in the estate villages of northern Germany between 1890 and 1923. It focuses primarily on the strategies adopted by seasonal labourers from Russian Poland in their relations with estate managements. Using police and union reports, and the letters and accounts of the migrants themselves, it argues that seasonal workers cannot simply be viewed as exploited, passive victims of this phase of agricultural modernization. This is evident, above all, in the practice of job-switching, which, although criminalized, was a widespread phenomenon both before 1914 and during the war, when the Poles were kept back as forced labour. Escaping estates to which they had been contracted, many workers outsmarted the system of registration by carrying multiple sets of identity papers. But such ‘contract breaking’ was also greatly facilitated by the endemic shortage of labour in the countryside; there were always some owners prepared to hire illegal fugitives. Examining the post-war years, the article also argues for a more nuanced understanding of relations between foreign and local workers. While most contemporary and historical accounts concentrate on social distance and mutual hostility between Germans and Poles, evidence from a number of different villages in the Mecklenburgs indicate that amicable relations and mutual cooperation were not uncommon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data on the moisture level of grassland sites have traditionally been based on the water supply levels according to Petersen (1952) in east German relevant technical literature. The question was to what extent these data are comparable to Ellenberg's widely-known moisture indicator values. The transformation scale for water supply levels and moisture values suggested in this paper was based on more than 500 grassland relevés collected in the German federal states of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The water supply levels were appraised according to the bioindicative method by Hundt (1964). There was a high rank correlation coefficient between average moisture values and water supply levels (rSpearman=0.939). The water supply levels were related to the following amplitudes of the average moisture values: W5-/4-: < 3.5; W3-: 3.5 – 4.4; W2-: 4.5 – 5.3; W2 +: 5.4 – 6.1; W3 +: 6.2 – 7.1; W4 +: 7.2 – 8.4; W5 +: > 8.4. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on materials in Polish archives and unpublished papers in the Hoover Institution, this article examines the question of Polish war-time collaboration with the Nazis by focusing on the actions of Władysław Studnicki and Leon Kozłowski, prominent members of the Polish pre-war political elite. These two biographies highlight the nature of contacts between Polish conservatives and German authorities. Studnicki's story demonstrates the futility of collaborationist initiatives in Poland due to Nazi indifference. Insinuations of collaboration against Kozłowski, a member of the pre-war government, reflected the tension between pro- and anti- Sanacja politicians. In the end, the actions of these two men demonstrate that in the absence of a 'Quisling' regime in Poland there was a sliding scale between 'collaboration' and 'co-operation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]