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This paper centres the colonial pre-histories of 'the digital' to complicate posthumanist theorisations of subjectivity. Posthumanism helpfully undercuts human exceptionalism by presenting subjectivity as always-already co-constituted by technology. However, this paper argues that it insufficiently engages the human as the historico-political effect of negating the assumed non-technological colonial Other. Focusing on liberal humanism between the 16th and 19th centuries, the paper theorises the modern human as bound up in 'technological onticide'. The presumed absence of technology became a (theo-centric, ratio-centric, bio-centric) measure of the Other's sub-humanity, at the same time as this Other was expected to be humanised through its technologisation. An emphasis on technological onticide complicates universalist theories of subjectivity that take it as always a matter of human-technology co-constitution. The paper argues that, to confront the legacies of ontological murder, conceptual room needs to be made for in human, counter human or un human theories of subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the visual representation of the refugee child in digital news media in Cyprus at two historical moments of significant immigration rise in Europe as a result of violent conflict: the period of May 2015-2016 and February 2022-2023. The analysis showed that refugee children were portrayed in ways which led to their de/humanization. However, differences in the language, themes, and visual grammar applied gave way to the emergence of a hierarchy of refugee child subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of urban living is evolving, and there is a growing interest in creating smaller, more connected, and hyperlocal neighbourhoods, where everything people need is within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. This paper challenges the concept of the '15-minute city' as a panacea for urban ills, by exploring the history of utopian urban planning and regeneration aimed at creating sustainable, inclusive and vibrant communities by desegregating disadvantaged groups. Specifically, we examine social mixing policies, which are recurring top-down interventions that pathologise concentrated urban disadvantage. We trace the evolution of these policies in Europe from the Garden City movement to post-war social housing redevelopment to the current 15-minute city, which we consider to be social mix by stealth. While such policies can reduce the degree of concentrated disadvantage in the short term, they tend to be ineffective in the long term, as deprived neighbourhoods often remain so despite attempts to make them more diverse. The paper argues that the 15-minute city would be implemented through de facto social mix actions at the neighbourhood level, which are insufficient to address the deeper structural issues that perpetuate spatial inequality and deprivation. We propose that longitudinal and comparative analyses, combined with 'right to the city' perspectives, should be considered in future research and policymaking to understand – and more importantly address – why urban renewal initiatives that aim for equitable outcomes at the neighbourhood scale ultimately fail to deliver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Economic burden studies can provide insights into the drivers leading to increasing healthcare costs. It can also provide a more holistic view of how diseases impact the welfare of patients and their families. Having concrete estimates of the economic burden across multiple diseases can help policymakers determine which diseases are economically more burdensome. This study aimed to review and summarise comprehensively economic burden studies across multiple diseases in the Nordic countries between 2000 and 2020. Methods: According to the 2020 PRISMA statement, a systematic literature review was conducted in PubMed, CINAHL, Academic Search Premier and Global Health databases using key terms related to the economic burden of any disease in Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Grey literature was also reviewed. Results: A total of 10,050 potential titles and abstracts were identified and screened, and 254 full-text papers that met the inclusion criteria were evaluated by two independent reviewers. Of these, 119 articles were included in a qualitative synthesis. Twenty-nine had clearly defined comparison groups, thus able to attribute the costs to the disease. Large variations concerning methodology and cost components were noted. Across diseases, the economic burden ranged from EUR 1668 per patient annually for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to EUR 93,041 for multiple sclerosis. However, estimates varied widely, even within each disease. Conclusions: Our review highlights the need for more comparable economic burden studies. Future studies should focus on applying robust methodology and homogeneous cost-reporting methods to inform policymakers about which diseases are economically more burdensome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many argue populist radical-right parties to be the largest contemporary threat to democracy, much of the evidence either focuses on the rare case of a populist radical-right prime minister, or conflates right-populist prime ministers with right-populist government participation, with some asserting that it would be difficult for these parties to have any real effect without holding the prime ministership. In this paper I conduct a large-scale analysis of European nations to quantify the effect right-populist junior coalition partners have on liberal democracy. I argue that as junior coalition partners, they will indeed affect democratic quality, albeit in ways that differ from that of a right-populist prime minister. While previous literature has demonstrated that populist radical-right parties bring with them decreases in the level of democratic quality pertaining to institutional constraints on power and mass civil liberties, junior coalition partners are only able to effect the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While transnational research infrastructure projects long preceded the formal integration process that created the European Union, their advancement is an increasingly central part of EU research policy and of European integration in general. This paper analyses the Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure–European Research Infrastructure Consortium (BBMRI–ERIC) as a recent example of institutionalized scientific collaboration in Europe that has formally been established as part of EU science policy. BBMRI–ERIC, a network of European biobanks, is expected to contribute to both European science and European integration. Yet its achievements in these domains are interpreted differently by various actors involved. This paper draws on STS conceptualizations of infrastructures as relational, experimental, and promissory assemblages. These support the formulation of a working definition of research infrastructures that in turn helps to explore the heterogeneous meanings attributed to BBMRI–ERIC. The paper describes the creation of this distributed European research infrastructure, and divergent understandings of what it means for BBMRI–ERIC to be distributed, to be European and to be a research infrastructure. This analysis demonstrates how building a research infrastructure is also an effort to define what it means to be European—a process in which what is European about science and what science can do for Europe is continuously (re-)imagined, contested and negotiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the politics of (dis)assembling borders within Europe. It examines the performance of the Berlin-based artist collective Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (Center for Political Beauty, ZPS) in 2014, in which artist activists temporarily removed white border crosses commemorating death at the former Berlin Wall. With this unauthorized displacement, ZPS sought to problematize ongoing violence and death at European borders. Via a three-part analysis of the performance Erster Europäischer Mauerfall (First European Fall of the Wall), the paper outlines a political framework for understanding art around and against borders – contributing to accounts on border art and the politics of borders. Staged as critique against the official commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall, perceived by ZPS as festivalized and thus apolitical event, the multiple performance acts highlight material and emotional movements. They oscillate between past and present border death, commemorated and forgotten border objects, bodies, places. In particular, ZPS aimed to denounce (implicit) hierarchies regarding how and whose death at European borders is remembered via acts of (dis)assembling. By unsolicitedly (re)moving Berlin's border crosses (Act I), mobilizing over 100 activists to dismantle border fences and temporarily installing replica crosses at Southern EU borders and placing them in the hands of contemporary refugees (Act III), ZPS mobilized public concern about contemporary border politics and commemoration. The paper contributes to border studies that view borders as inherently complex and contingent symbolic, socio-spatial arrangements, which affect and are affected by objects, bodies, and policies that oscillate between contested absence and presence. Accompanied by controversial media coverage, the performance gathered (im)mobile bodies, moving objects, and multiple emotional responses about the what, where and who of Europe. Ultimately, politics of (dis)assembling unfold absence and presence to articulate mo(ve)ments of 'the political' as contestation against complacency and border violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of Muslims in the European public spheres has raised a hoist of debates concerning issues of neutrality, tolerance, and secularism. All over Europe, Muslims are the target of specific forms of hostility, a phenomenon rising substantial questions about the real inclusivity of European democratic spaces. The category of 'Islamophobia' has emerged as a valid heuristic tool to identify specific processes of racialization of religion. However, its validity has been fiercely questioned, and the use of this term has been defined as a pretext to bar the way to any form of criticism and objection to Islam. This paper will use the case of Islamophobia to reflect on the new set of conflicts between freedom of religion and freedom of speech, in the perspective of constructing post secularist, pluralistic public spheres. This paper adopts gender as a privileged lens to identify the mechanisms of essentialization and reification at work in the case of Islam [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The concept of stigma has been widely used to understand patterns of discrimination and negative ideas surrounding people with mental health problems, yet we know little of the specific nuances of how this might operate beyond the 'Global North'. Aim: This paper aims to explore the notion of stigma in an Indian context by considering the lived experience of patients, carers and community members. Methods: A sample of 204 participants, representing mental health patients, informal carers and community members was recruited from urban and rural areas in Kerala, India. Participants took part in interviews where they were encouraged to talk about their experiences of mental ill health, attitudes towards these problems, barriers encountered and sources of support. Results: Experiences akin to the experience of stigma in Europe and the United States were elicited but there were important local dimensions specific to the Indian context. The difficulties faced by people with diagnoses of mental disorders in finding marriage partners was seen as an important problem, leading to marriage proposals being refused in some cases, and secrecy on the part of those with mental health problems. Rather than the 'self-stigma' identified in the US, participants were more likely to see this as a collective problem in that it could reflect badly on the family group as a whole rather than just the sufferer. Conclusions: In the Indian context, the idioms of stigma emphasised impairments in marriage eligibility and the implications for the family group rather than just the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While in the Nordic countries we have well-developed welfare policies and several structural, statutory measures in place aiming to promote public health, studies from these countries are often absent from systematic reviews of research literature assessing the effects of policy measures designed to promote health. Using adolescent health promotion and efforts related to primary prevention of obesity as an example, this short commentary aims to illustrate the paucity of well-designed studies investigating the effects of public health policies affecting adolescents. This paper argues that the Nordic research community is in a good position to help fill this gap, and to contribute more widely to the international literature on evaluation of policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The present paper aims to situate Macaronic Latin, a peculiar type of linguistic mixture that was used in literary works in early modern Europe, within the context of phenomena such as code-switching and borrowing, as well as mixed and constructed languages. The main objective is to see whether and how it can be compared to various instances of linguistic structures originating from more than one source language. Design/Methodology/Approach: After a description of its historical background and sociolinguistic features, main linguistic traits of Macaronic Latin are sketched and, finally, compared to other language contact phenomena, with particular reference to the fusion hypothesis. Data and Analysis: The main data for the analysis are sixty samples from macaronic works belonging to eleven language pairs. The analysis shows that mixed words in Macaronic Latin have properties of both borrowings and loans, being very similar to nonce formations. When compared to mixed and constructed languages, Macaronic Latin shows peculiarities that set it apart from either group. Findings/Conclusions: Although individual structural aspects of Macaronic Latin align its individual aspects with various outcomes of linguistic contact, the sociolinguistic pattern of its creation and later development make it a rather untypical case of linguistic mixing. Originality: Latin served as the main language of learned communication in medieval and early modern Europe; yet, this paper is the first study devoted to putting it in the context of mixed language debate. Significance/Implications: The study suggests that the preservation of the widespread use of a language with no native speakers requires sociolinguistic forces so strong so as to override many trends of what has been established as regular linguistic development. This implies that in investigating such cases we might need a modified research methodology and an extended terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government formation in multiparty systems requires election winners to strike deals to form a coalition government. Do voters respond and how do they respond to coalition government deals? This paper examines the short-term consequences of coalition government formation on voters in European democracies relying on survey panel data and original content analysis of coalition agreements. It tests theoretical expectations that deal with both the actual and perceived ideological shifts parties make when joining coalition deals as well as the effect of a much simpler heuristic cue based on preferences. The findings indicate that coalition deals have consequences on party preferences, but voter perceptions play a much stronger effect than the actual content of coalition deals. These results have important implications for our understanding of public opinion and provide important insights into the current difficulties and challenges of government formation and representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A call for papers for the special issue of the "The European Journal of Women's Studies" concerning migration in Europe, Europeanisation, and European feminism to be due on September 30, 2013 is presented.

Countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have transformed from a centrally planned communist system to a market economy and liberal democracy after 1990. The rapidly changing social and power relations have been gradually manifested in the spatial pattern of cities. After the turn of the millennium, a growing number of papers reported that the regeneration of inner-city neighbourhoods intensified, generating population change in certain areas. Authors writing on urban renewal and gentrification in CEE have been inspired by the typology of gentrification elaborated in Western contexts, even though historical legacies and specific local conditions set serious limitations on the use of such concepts. The aim of this paper is to scrutinise the essential features of urban change and gentrification in post-socialist cities, discussing the main pre-conditions for, actors in and the resulting types of this process. Existing literature in the field has been systematically collected, analysed and compared. According to our findings the classic stage model of gentrification cannot be used in post-socialist cities, partly because the process is still in its infancy and partly because several hybrid forms of gentrification-like processes hide the spatial effects of market-based renewal. The variegated forms of urban change are the result of historical legacies, path dependencies and a set of factors embedded in local contexts. The paper highlights some of the research gaps in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of genome editing to animal research connects to a wide variety of policy concerns and public conversations. We suggest focusing narrowly on public opinion of genome editing is to overlook the range of positions from which people are brought into relationships with animal research through these technologies. In this paper, we explore three key roles that publics are playing in the development of genome editing techniques applied to animals in biomedical research. First, publics are positioned by surveys and focus groups as stakeholders with opinions that matter to the development of research technologies. Learning lessons from controversies over genetically modified food in Europe, these methods are used to identify problems in science–society relations that need to be managed. Second, people are recruited into research projects through participating in biobanks and providing data, where their contributions are encouraged by appeals to the public good and maintained by public confidence. Thirdly, patients are increasingly taking positions within research governance, as lay reviewers on funding panels, where their expertise helps align research priorities and practices with public expectations of research. These plural publics do not easily aggregate into a simple or singular public opinion on genome editing. We conclude by suggesting more attention is needed to the multiple roles that different publics expect – and are expected – to play in the future development of genomic technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Announces the Organizing and Programme Committee's call for the submission of papers to the fourth European Conference on Information Systems to be held in Lisbon, Portugal in July 1996. Conference topics; contact information.

Although European blood collection organizations are currently obtaining sufficient and safe blood from the majority population, they report having difficulty recruiting first and second-generation immigrants from non-European countries. Most existing studies on these underrepresented groups, who have been coined the " missing minorities " in blood donation, have adopted an instrumental approach that focuses on the development of targeted recruitment strategies to overcome specific barriers to donation faced by members of these minorities. Although this approach does offer several short-term benefits, our central argument is that it is one-sided in its questioning of the non-participation of ethnic minorities. The literature currently lacks research on how the blood procurement system is failing to include minorities. Drawing on recent social theory, we seek a broader sociological understanding of minority under-representation in blood donor populations by shifting the analytic focus toward a critical examination of the main pillars of the procurement system within the European context. This paper advances a novel analytical framework based on two general propositions. First, we apply the literature on "citizenship regimes" to argue that blood donation is part of one specific institutionalization of citizenship and solidarity. We then reconceptualize the "problem" of missing minorities in European blood donation as an application for social change, suggesting avenues related to blood collection as a way of renegotiating minority-majority relations of solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writings on urban development and planning in Europe have been dominated by a combination of technical studies of the real estate sector and more structural political economy approaches on land expropriation and financialisation. In this paper we draw on the example of the London Landed Estates, to critically assess how land-owning real estate companies, that we call city-owners, perform their roles and what models and knowledge sources they draw upon in managing and carefully curating urban spaces and places. Data sources include interviews with estate managers, others involved in, or affected by, their management, and other corporate public information. Our theoretical framing draws on performativity theory that we see as a valuable addition to existing research approaches. We describe and analyse the ways these agencies construct narratives and practices of socially responsible and historically established forms of performance, that they label place stewardship, and the specific mechanisms they use to bring places into existence. Collectively, the discussion calls for an increased focus on how models abstracted from local context and politics can be 'localised', in the study of the governance of the built environment. Greater attention also needs to be paid to the work that place does in influencing the strategies, tactics and activities of property owners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many urban development projects (UDPs) in Europe take place on lands belonging to public bodies and administrations, and publicly owned firms. Yet, the literature has failed to explain why a substantial proportion of the remaking of European cities is shaped on public properties, and with what outcomes. My underlying hypothesis is that the redevelopment of such properties depends primarily on the restructuring of the state. Firstly, this paper provides evidence of the relationships between three dynamics of state restructuring and the disposal of public land and real estate properties owned by one sector of the French state, that is, the railways. Secondly, the paper focuses on two UDPs of railway sites, respectively located in Paris and Nantes, in order to disclose the specificity of the redevelopment process associated with public railway properties, due to the socio-legal infrastructure of railway land disposal stemming from these dynamics. The paper demonstrates that (i) state restructuring impels various levels and organisations of the state to redevelop public land and real estate properties; and (ii) the effects of state restructuring can be explained only by analysing the mediating role of the socio-legal infrastructure of these properties, which frames the processes and outcomes of the redevelopment projects. In so doing, the paper offers a specific account of the explanatory factors, processes and outcomes of the relationship between state restructuring and a significant proportion of the restructuring of urban areas in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines place-specific factors affecting geographies of innovation, that is, the transfer of research from the laboratory to bedside in the healthcare sector in four European bioscience regions. These regions are Medical Delta (MD; Leiden, Rotterdam and Delft, Netherlands) Oxford and the Thames Valley (OTV; UK), Biocat (Catalonia, Spain) and Life Science Zurich (LSZ; Switzerland). Evidence is drawn from the European Union-funded Healthcare Technology and Innovation for Economic Success (HealthTIES) project (2010–2013). The analytical framework, the HealthTIES Innovation Cycle, is organised into resources (inputs), innovation system elements and outcomes. The paper shows that each region represents different positions within international value chains of innovation in the healthcare sector. They range from the highly research intensive but with relatively less in the way of commercial exploitation location (OTV) to the less research intensive but with more commercialisation (LSZ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent migration from three little-studied European Union (EU) countries, the Baltic states, focusing on early-career graduates who move to London. It looks at how these young migrants explain the reasons for their move, their work and living experiences in London, and their plans for the future, based on 78 interviews with individual migrants. A key objective of this paper is to rejuvenate the core–periphery structural framework through the theoretical lens of London as an ‘escalator’ region for career development. We add a necessary nuance on how the time dimension is crucial in understanding how an escalator region functions – both in terms of macro-events such as EU enlargement or economic crisis, and for life-course events such as career advancement or family formation. Our findings indicate that these educated young adults from the EU’s north-eastern periphery migrate for a combination of economic, career, lifestyle and personal-development reasons. They are ambivalent about their futures and when, and whether, they will return-migrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Means-tested transfer schemes in Europe and elsewhere tend to include not only income tests but also asset tests of various sorts. The role of asset tests in minimum income protection provisions has been extensively researched in the Anglo-Saxon context. Far fewer authors have assessed the role of asset tests on social policy in a continental European context. Although asset tests may be useful in singling out the more deserving of the poor, we know relatively little of their actual impact on eligibility and social outcomes in European welfare states. This paper looks at the prevalence and design of asset tests in European minimum income protection schemes. We distinguish between two main types of asset tests: outright disqualification when assets reach a certain value, versus a more gradual tapering at a fictional rate of return. We then analyse in greater detail how asset tests in Belgium and Germany, as representatives of these two types, affect minimum income protection eligibility and poverty outcomes. We use the EUROMOD microsimulation model on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey data in order to assess the effects of asset tests. This survey was explicitly designed to more realistically reflect assets and capital incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant inclusion in a society is a process that ultimately succeeds or fails at the local level and cities have increasingly taken a proactive stance in delivering their own policies for integration. The literature on the topic has focused particularly on the cooperation between local political institutions and civil society organizations, underestimating the key role played by social partners. This paper demonstrates the participation of social partners in the local governance of migrant integration in three European cities: Barcelona, Lyon and Gothenburg. Drawing on process tracing analysis and qualitative interviews, the article illustrates the different responses of local unions and employers' organizations to immigration and the variety of approaches to supporting migrant integration into employment and society. The article argues that these approaches, which take place within different institutional and structural contexts, shape different patterns of migrant inclusion and allow us to explain the new and traditional ways in which social partners operate as social and political actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current phase of intensive globalisation, digitisation, the expansion of fintech companies and the overall impacts of the recent crisis seem to spur further concentration in the banking sector in terms of both the number of banks in operation and the number of banking centres. This research is motivated by the fact that, in contrast to leading financial and banking centres that attract considerable research attention, small banking centres have remained under-researched, despite their large number and the important role they play in their host communities and regions. This paper deals with the recent evolutionary dynamics of 199 small European banking centres and is based on an analysis of the economic performance of individual banks aggregated at the city level where they have their headquarters. The analysed indicators cover size, profitability and the level of risk of particular banks over the 2004–2015 period. In addition, the data were analysed for three basic European macro-regions (western Europe, southern Europe and central and eastern Europe) and in terms of the ownership of the banks headquartered in particular centres (foreign versus domestic). Our investigation shows that, even though a significant decline has been observed in the number of these centres, the financial performance of banks headquartered in small financial centres differs widely, depending significantly upon the European macro-region (a decisive number of defunct banking centres was concentrated in southern Europe) and the ownership structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been concerns about the decline of health promotion as a practice and discipline and, alongside this, calls for a clearer articulation of health promotion research and what, if anything, makes it distinct. This discussion paper, based on a review of the literature, the authors’ own experiences in the field, and a workshop delivered by two of the authors at the 8th Nordic Health Promotion Conference, seeks to state the reasons why health promotion research is distinctive. While by no means exhaustive, the paper suggests four distinctive features. The paper hopes to be a catalyst to enable health promotion researchers to be explicit in their practice and to begin the process of developing an agreed set of research principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: This is the first part of a two-part paper that takes an explorative approach to assess crisis and austerity in European countries during the Great Recession. The ultimate aim of this two-part paper is to explore the “crisis–austerity” thesis by Stuckler and Basu and assess whether it is the interplay between austerity and crisis, rather than the current economic crisis per se, that can led to deterioration in population health. In Part I of this paper we offer one way of operationalizing crisis severity and austerity. We examine countries as specific configurations of crisis and policy responses and classify European countries into “ideal types.” Methods: Cases included were 29 countries participating in the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) surveys. Based on fuzzy set methodology, we constructed two fuzzy sets, “austerity” and “severe crisis.” Austerity was measured by changes in welfare generosity; severe crisis was measured by changes in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth. Results: In the initial phase of the Great Recession, most countries faced severe crisis combined with no austerity. From 2010–2011 onward, there was a divide between countries. Some countries consistently showed signs of austerity policies (with or without severe crisis); others consistently did not. Conclusions: The fuzzy set ideal-type analysis shows that the European countries position themselves, by and large, in configurations of crisis and austerity in meaningful ways that allow us to explore the “crisis–austerity” thesis by Stuckler and Basu. This exploration is the undertaking of Part II of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the population transition model for Vietnam, based on Grover's five stages of population transition. Compatible with the transitional model of Western Europe and other advanced Asian countries, this process in Vietnam has some significant differences: (a) the initial shift or transition of fertility of the population in Vietnam is later than in Asian countries by about 13 years while compared to Europe it is nearly 108 years later; and (b) while the period of initial transition of mortality in Vietnam may not be very different from other Asian countries, it is more than 100 years later than in European countries, especially those in Western Europe. One of the main factors influencing the late transition of Vietnam's population process is, of course, colonialism and the consecutive wars (1945–1954 and 1955–1975). After 1975, Vietnam's population was stable as industrialisation and urbanisation led to the development of health services, education and an urban lifestyle, as well as effective population policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Insufficient physical activity (PA) is one of the largest public health challenges of our time and requires a multisectoral public-health response. PA recommendations state that all children and adolescents should accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) daily and carry out vigorous PA (VPA) three times weekly. While participation in sports club activities is known to enhance the probability of reaching the recommended overall PA level, less is known about the contribution of sports club participation to VPA, and few cross-national comparisons have been carried out. The purpose of this paper is to study whether participation in sports club activities is associated with meeting the overall PA and VPA recommendations among children and adolescents across six European countries, namely Belgium (Flanders), Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ireland and Sweden. Methods: Analyses were carried out on existing self-reported national data sets using descriptive statistics and logistic regression. Results: Results indicate that approximately two-thirds of children and adolescents take part in sports club activities in the given countries. Sports club participants were more likely to meet the overall PA recommendations (OR 2.4–6.4) and VPA recommendation (OR 2.8–5.0) than non-participants. Conclusions: The extent to which overall PA and/or VPA is gained through sports club participation versus other settings needs to be further studied. Nonetheless, it can be argued that sports clubs have an important position in PA promotion for younger populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: The so-called 'Great Recession' in Europe triggered widespread concerns about population health, as reflected by an upsurge in empirical research on the health impacts of the economic crisis. A growing body of empirical studies has also been devoted to socioeconomic inequalities in health during the Great Recession. The aim of the current study is to summarise this health inequality literature by means of a scoping review. Methods : We have performed a scoping review of the research literature (English language) published in the years 2012–2017. Only empirical papers with (a) health status measured on the individual level, (b) information on socioeconomic position (i.e. employment status, educational level, income/wealth, and/or occupational class), and (c) data from European countries in both pre- and post-crisis years were considered relevant. In total, 49 empirical studies fulfilled these inclusion criteria. Results : The empirical findings in the 49 included studies predominantly show that socioeconomic inequalities in health either increased or remained stable from pre- to post-crisis years. Two-thirds (65%) of the studies found evidence of either increasing or partially increasing health inequalities. Thus, people in lower socioeconomic strata fared worse overall in terms of health during the Great Recession, compared to people with higher socioeconomic status. Conclusions : The Great Recession in Europe tends to be followed by increasing socioeconomic inequalities in health. Policymakers should take note of this finding. Widening socioeconomic inequalities in health is a major cause of concern, in particular if health deterioration among 'vulnerable groups' is caused by accelerating cumulative disadvantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the transformations that have taken place in Irish higher education under neoliberalism and, in particular, during the period of austerity since 2008. We adopt a critical political economic framework conceptualizing Ireland as a prototypical neoliberal state and maintain that the period of economic crisis since 2008 has witnessed a deepening of neoliberalism. We argue that restructuring in the education sector has been shaped by forces originating from the European Union, global institutions, as well as from the interests of Irish political and economic elites. We examine several aspects of the neoliberalization of the education sector, including privatization, commercialization, labor casualization and the erosion of work conditions. Empirically, the paper synthesizes and conceptualizes available data on neoliberalism and higher education in Ireland. Theoretically, it presents a useful framework to investigate similar cases in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, research has emphasised a shift from city government to urban governance. Such a shift brings about its very own challenges, namely governance gaps, uncertain configurations in governance and a limited capacity to act. In this paper, we argue that the concurrent rise of strategy documents in city administration addresses these challenges. Our central claim is that strategy documents can be understood as a distinct discursive device through which local governments enact aspired governance configurations. We illustrate our argument empirically using two prominent examples that, while showing similar features and characteristics, are anchored in different administrative traditions and institutional frameworks: the city administrations of Sydney, Australia, and Vienna, Austria. The contribution of the paper is to show how strategy documents enact governance configurations along four core dimensions: the setting in space and time, the definition of the public, the framing of the res publica and legitimacy issues. Moreover, our comparative analysis of Sydney and Vienna gives evidence of differences in governance configurations enacted through strategy documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades many cities have experienced growing pressure to produce and stage cultural events of different sorts to promote themselves and improve economic development. Culture-led development often relies on significant public investment and major private-sector sponsoring. In the context of strained public finances and profound economic crisis in European peripheral countries, local community low-budget events that manage to create significant fluxes of visitors and visibility assume a particular relevance. This paper looks at the four editions (2011–2014) of Noc-Noc, an arts festival organized by a local association in the city of Guimarães, Portugal, which is based on creating transient spaces of culture by transforming numerous homes, commercial outlets and other buildings into ephemeral convivial and playful ‘public’ environments. By interviewing a sample of people who have hosted (sometimes doubling as artists) these transitory art performances and exhibitions, artists and the events’ organizers and by experiencing the four editions of the event and engaging in multiple informal conversations with the public, this paper attempts to discuss how urban citizens may disrupt the cleavages between public and private space permitting various transgressions, and unsettling the hegemonic condition of the city council as the patron of the large majority of events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of candidate-centered electoral systems, that encourage politicians to seek personal votes, have focused on the impact of such institutions. This paper focuses instead on their origins in new democracies. It hypothesizes that voter demands for local and individual benefits and party access to government resources for such benefits are likely to lead politicians to choose a candidate-centered electoral rule during a transition to democracy. Cross-national quantitative studies of 97 new democracies from 1950 to 2008 support these claims, revealing that (1) the poorer the average voter, the more likely a candidate-centered electoral institution will be adopted and (2) where incumbent governing parties are more influential in selecting new rules, candidate-centered electoral systems are more likely to be selected. Nonetheless, (3) in highly developed countries even those governing party members tend to opt for a party-centered system; conversely, (4) in extremely less-developed countries even opposition politicians, who would otherwise select a party-centered electoral system, are likely to choose a candidate-centered system if they are dominant at the time of writing the new institution. These findings shed light on the endogeneity of electoral systems and suggest a powerful impact of social context on institutional choice. The paper also contributes more generally to theories of electoral system choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the constructions and dynamics of subaltern migrant subjectivities in three arrival cities, Athens, Istanbul and Nicosia. The paper draws on empirical research in three cities geopolitically located in the most south-eastern part of the Mediterranean basin and the boundary triangle connecting Europe, Asia and Africa. This is essentially a process where the will, agency and praxis of subaltern migrants in the context of social struggles are interwoven with precarious spaces. Precarity is at the core of their daily existence: precarious labour, precarious stay and precarious lives. The generation, maintenance, evolution, even erosion of mobile commons are consequential of social processes and struggles driven by subaltern and precarious subjects, migrants and non-migrants alike. The article explores how the generation of claims to rights is restructuring Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city’, as new forms of commons through mobility, resistance and digital materialities are contesting the sovereign governance and surveillance technologies in Europe and beyond. The paper contends that such perspectives from the borders of Europe, that is, in and out of Europe, are not only crucial to the understanding of what is happening in Europe, but are an advanced glimpse into potentialities of the world ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recordkeeping and record-using were important in Classical societies and early medieval Europe, rapid evolution and change characterized recordkeeping practices from the late Middle Ages throughout the early modern period. This paper recasts changes in Western European recordkeeping from the fourteenth to eighteenth century in terms of the differentiation of spaces and practices, thus challenging older literature that sees increasing accumulation around a foundational archivum as the primary mode of expansion. Empirically, the argument concentrates on developments in the German lands that produced highly sophisticated Registratur (practices that tracked and indexed a wide variety of circulating records) across the German sphere after 1400. As first argued by Ernst Pitz, early modern German archivists began differentiating conceptual and physical spaces for recordkeeping in the fifteenth century, thus producing both archives of charters and registries of informational records of many kinds. A close examination of developments in Habsburg Innsbruck confirms that both an ordered archive and a powerful comprehensive system of registry emerged simultaneously in the 1520s in one of the most sophisticated recordkeeping venues of the era. The paper also reconsiders the historiography of archives, emphasizing how the cultural, medial and spatial turns have transformed current research. By contrasting relatively stable medial forms – pen, ink and paper; roll, bundle and codex – with more dynamic and transformative medial configurations which can be studied through the systematic comparison of specific cases, I argue that new research on archival history offers fresh and less culturally bound approaches to the preservation of records in the archives that remain the foundation for historical research into the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many ways of moving through a city. Cycling is one which has received considerable attention from urban scholars. Yet it has remained largely neglected within the burgeoning literature on the post-socialist urbanisms of Central and Eastern Europe. This paper uses a case study from Sofia, Bulgaria to address this gap in urban research. By exploring the practices and affordances of cycling, we offer a discussion of everyday mobility, public life and urban space in post-socialist Sofia. This case study incorporates ethnography and in-depth interviews with regular cyclists. Through a discussion of bicycling spaces and practices, this paper complicates the notion of post-socialist cities as places defined by the decline of public sensibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research on the globalisation of services in economic geography continues to develop in multiple directions, some service industries are still largely under-researched. The hotel industry is one of the most striking examples. Given that the hotel sector is much more global in terms of number of countries covered by each company than many other service industries, one of the crucial aspects of hotel sector globalisation that requires attention from a geographical perspective is the territorial embeddedness of expanding hotel groups in the variety of institutional, political and economic contexts. Grounded in the global production networks (GPNs) approach, this paper aims to address this lacuna in empirical and theoretical terms. Drawing from extensive research carried out in Poland, Estonia and Bulgaria, the paper examines the impact of post-communist transformations on the expansion of international hotel groups into Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and analyses how different hotel GPNs interact with the various contexts across the region. It is argued that the ways in which post-communist transformations influence the expansion of hotel groups into CEE depend upon the degree of territorial embeddedness of the hotel group, which, in turn, is reflective of the group’s business model and the architecture of its GPN. In theoretical terms, the paper illustrates how, to better account for the particularities of CEE, the GPN approach can incorporate the ‘alternative approach’ – the theory of post-communist transformations that challenges the neoliberal orthodoxy which drove the post-communist restructuring in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses innovative democratic forums carried out in Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom to examine people's ideas about welfare-state priorities and future prospects. We use a moral economy framework in the context of regime differences and the move towards neo-liberalism across Europe. Broadly speaking, attitudes reflect regime differences, with distinctive emphasis on reciprocity and the value of work in Germany, inclusion and equality in Norway, and individual responsibility and the work-ethic in the UK. Neo-liberal market-centred ideas appear to have made little headway in regard to popular attitudes, except in the already liberal-leaning UK. There is also a striking assumption by UK participants that welfare is threatened externally by immigrants who take jobs from established workers and internally by the work-shy who undermine the work-ethic. A key role of the welfare state is repressive rather than enabling: to protect against threats to well-being rather than provide benefits for citizens. UK participants also anticipate major decline in state provision. In all three countries there is strong support for continuing and expanding social investment policies, but for different reasons: to enable contribution in Germany, to promote equality and mobility in Norway, and to facilitate self-responsibility in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparative and extrospective nature of contemporary urban policy-making is one that has demanded our attention in recent years. Relatively long established and formal inter-urban networks of professionals of one sort or another have been joined by activists, consultants, financiers, lawyers and think tankers who have involved themselves in the arriving at, and making up of, urban policy. Through conferences, documents, knowledge banks, policy tourism, power-points and webinars, an emergent informational infrastructure has emerged to shape and structure the circulations and making of policy-making across a numbers of areas. From aging to creativity, climate change to drugs, education to transport, urban policies in different spheres have been rendered mobile. There is political work of adaptation, mediation and translation that has to be done to move policies from one location to another, of course. In some cases these policies appear in a range of locations, while in others they do not, a reminder – if one was needed – that those involved in the making up of policy are not always able to render all elements of the future under their control. This emphasis on the relational and territorial geographies of global-urban policy-making captures some of the issues facing those who lead cities. This paper sets out some of the intellectial challenges for those working on these issues, highlighting some potentially fruitful ways forward, illustrating the main arguments through the use of Tax Increment Financing, a financial value-capturing model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the regional dimensions of under-employment by analysing the uneven dispersion of part-time jobs in Greece. It understands under-employment as an integral dimension of contemporary flexible labour trends, triggered by devaluation and expanding amid crisis, although in diverse geographical and sectoral terms. It follows a methodology that comparatively analyses statistical data, relevant secondary sources and previous case studies, before moving to a theoretical contextualization of the findings. Based on this framework, NUTS-II level total employment and part-time work data are analysed through location quotients, and a new embellishment of shift-share analysis is implemented for 2005–2008 and 2009–2012 across nine sectors. The findings reveal four distinct, although porous, patterns of under-employment that are distinguished according to different regional productive specializations and the impact of structural or regional effects. The reasons why some regional economies, such as the tourist ones, were more resistant to employment losses, and at the same time the most keen on expanding part-time work, are scrutinized. Concluding, three deeper causal mechanisms, namely productive-technological, organizational and institutional, that determine the under-employment patterns revealed, are discussed and contrasted to relevant literature findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alongside the increased mobilization for mega-events, multiple immobilities and partial mobilities can be witnessed. Although the literature on the ‘mobility turn’ and the scholarship on urban policy mobilities both acknowledge the existence and importance of immobilization and immobility, immobility is under researched and relegated to a passive position. (Im)mobility is neither a thing nor a characteristic of things: a country or city are not mobile in themselves but in relation to (im)mobilization processes. By using the case of the lobbying by Perm (Russia) for the European Capital of Culture (a cultural policy and mega-event reserved for European Union member states), this paper focuses on the politics and practices of (im)mobilization and on the membership in awarding institutions as one of the factors which limit the mobilization of mega-events. Based on semi-structured interviews with key actors and archival research examining official policy documents and media accounts, the paper documents the politics, channels and practices of the mobilization of an immobile policy. The mobilization of immobile policies works by trying to overcome the constitution of policies as (im)mobile and the factors which limit mobilization, in this case the identity-building and region-building project of the European Union. The European Capital of Culture is a highly mobile policy within the European Union, which was constructed to produce ‘Europe’ as a political, economic and cultural space. The ‘role of elsewhere’ and of the informational infrastructure (reports, models, experts, consultancies, etc.) which was developed for a smoother circulation inside the geographical scope of the policy, permitted it to travel outside, and enables the creation of new policies and events modelled on an immobile policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are few analyses available of the role played by finance and business consultancies in post-socialist economic geographies and even fewer on the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Both issues are addressed in this paper with a focus on Italian banks and business services as well as their relationship to SME outsourcing in Central and Eastern Europe. The basic premise of this paper is that a relationship exists between the internationalization of banks, services, and SMEs when analyzed within the framework of the Uppsala Internationalization Process Model. Specifically, banks and services allow the mobilization of resources forming knowledge pipelines between Italian firms and Central and Eastern European regional economies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, most European countries have experienced substantial demographic changes and rising cultural diversity. Understanding the social and economic impacts of these shifts is a major challenge for policymakers. Richard Florida’s ideas have provided a popular – and pervasive – framework for doing so. This paper assess Florida’s legacy and sets out a ‘post-Florida’ framework for ‘technology, talent and tolerance’ research. The paper first traces the development of Florida’s ideas. ‘Florida 1.0’, encapsulated by the Three Ts framework, has performed badly in practice. There are problems in bringing causality to the fundamental relationships, and in consistently replicating the results in other countries. ‘Florida 2.0’, though suggests that Creative Class metrics have value as alternative measures of human capital. This create space for a post-Florida agenda based on economic micro-foundations. I argue that the growing body of ‘economics of diversity’ research meets these conditions, and review theory and empirics. Urban ‘diversity shocks’ shift the size and composition of populations and workforces, with impacts operating via labour markets, and through wider production and consumption networks. While short-term labour market effects are small, over time low-value industrial sectors may become migrant-dependent. Diversity may help raise productivity and wages through innovation, entrepreneurship, market access and trade channels. Bigger, more diverse cities help generate hybridised goods and services, but may also raise local costs through crowding. All of this presents new challenges for policymakers, who need to manage diversity’s net effects, and address both economic costs and benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is located within work in urban studies about the significance of contact with difference as a means for reducing prejudice and achieving social change. Recent approaches, influenced by theories of affect, have emphasised non-conscious everyday negotiations of difference in the city. In this paper it is argued that such approaches lose sight of the significance of the subject: of the reflective judgements of ‘others’ made by individuals; of our ability to make decisions around the control of our feelings and identifications; and of the significance of personal pasts and collective histories in shaping the ways we perceive and react to encounters. Rather, this paper uses a biographical approach focusing on interviewees’ narratives of encounter. Through its attention to processes of mobility and emplacement, it contributes to debates about when contact with difference matters by highlighting the importance of everyday social normativities in the production of moral dispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper studies the integration of migrant women in six European labour markets, highlighting how their migration penalty is related to the family's migration dynamics and to the husband's occupational condition. In order to compare the labour market outcomes of native and migrant women, Linear Probability Models are estimated using EU-LFS data. Results show that migrant women are penalized everywhere. However, in the Mediterranean labour markets their employment penalty is lower, while the penalty concerning job quality, conditional on employment, is relatively severe. Regarding the role of family migration, results show that: tied-movers women were disadvantaged with respect to both natives and other migrants; those migrants whose partners were unemployed or had low-quality jobs were more likely to find a job than those whose husbands had a good occupational condition. Both patterns were stronger in Mediterranean labour markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of the 'Little Ice Age' (LIA) on the glaciers of Svalbard has been well documented for a long time. This paper presents new data on the LIA maximum glacier extent and retreat by aerial photo interpretation and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools. We also make cartography where all results are shown in greater detail. During the LIA maximum, we find that the glacier area of Svalbard was 38,871 km2, and since then, the total glacier area loss in the archipelago has been 5096 km2 (13.1%). The total current glaciated area from the late 2000s is 33,775 km2. Since the LIA, the glaciers in the main islands of the archipelago have retreated by 12.8% in Spitsbergen, 13.4% in Nordaustlandet, and 16.7% in Barentsøya and Edgeøya. The analysis of the LIA maximum glacier extent in the different major drainage basins shows important differences; about 100 years ago, some glacier basins were more than 19% larger in the western and central regions of Spitsbergen, or even more than 23% larger in southern Nordaustlandet, while other small basins found in the northeast of this island were barely 1% larger. The greatest retreats are found in the tidewater glaciers, more variable and responsive to the water temperature changes, water dynamics, and bathymetry. In addition, the advances at some of these glaciers may correspond with surges, which means that the rapid retreats are caused by the post-surging phases as well as climate. The conclusions of this research point out an important ice loss in all of Svalbard since the LIA and the high vulnerability of this Arctic archipelago to global warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the consequences of the far-right in shaping foreign-born immigrants’ satisfaction with the way democracy works in their host country. It posits that while electorally successful far-right parties undermine democracy satisfaction, the magnitude of this effect is not uniform across all first-generation immigrants. Instead, it depends on newcomers’ citizenship status in their adopted homeland. The analyses using individual-level data collected as part of the five-round European Social Survey (ESS) 2002–2012 in 16 West European democracies reveal that the electoral strength of far-right parties in a form of vote and seat shares won in national elections is indeed powerfully linked to democracy satisfaction among foreign-born individuals. However, this relationship is limited to foreign-born non-citizens, as we have no evidence that far-right parties influence democracy attitudes among foreign-born individuals who have acquired citizenship in their adopted homeland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Based on the ideal type classification of European countries done in Part I of this paper, Part II explores whether the real ‘danger’ to public health is the interplay between austerity and crisis, rather than recession itself. Methods: We constructed two fuzzy sets of changes in population health based on a pooled file of European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data (2008 and 2013) including 29 European countries. The linear probability analyses of ‘limiting long-standing illness’ and ‘less than good’ health were restricted to the age group 20–64 years. We performed fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and studied whether configurations of ‘severe crisis’ and ‘austerity’ were linked to changes in population health. Results: Overall, the results of this fsQCA do not support the ‘crisis–austerity’ thesis. Results on ‘less than good’ health were highly inconsistent, while results on ‘limiting long-standing illness’, contrary to the thesis, showed a two-path model. Countries with either no severe crisis or no austerity were subsets of the set of countries that experienced deteriorated health. Results also show that several countries combined both paths. Conclusions: This fuzzy set analysis does not support Stuckler and Basu’s ‘crisis–austerity’ thesis, as those European countries that experienced recession and austerity were not consistently the countries with deteriorating health. There may be multiple reasons for this result, including analytical approach and operationalization of key concepts, but also resilient forces such as family support. We suggest more research on the topic based on more recent data and possibly other, or more, dimensions of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Labour Force Survey 2013, this paper examines gender differences in holding supervisory positions in 26 European countries and relates these differences to horizontal gender segregation, i.e. women and men working in different jobs. First, we confirm the findings of previous studies that women are still disadvantaged in holding supervisory positions in almost all countries. Second, by examining how women’s disadvantage varies when working in male-dominated, gender-mixed, and female-dominated occupations, we observe women’s lowest disadvantage in male-dominated occupations in most countries. Third, applying a two-stage multilevel analysis, we explore at the macro level how the country variation in women’s disadvantage in holding supervisory positions is related to horizontal gender segregation, selection of women in the labour market, and conditions facilitating the combination of work and family, and whether women’s disadvantage significantly differs among welfare regimes. We provide evidence that differences among welfare regimes capture much better country variation than single macro indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing interest in island economies within Europe. In the European Union (EU) this has led to enhanced Cohesion Policy support for islands, along with a number of other regions facing geographical challenges. Because of major problems with data, comparative research on islands across different EU member states has been of limited extent. This paper explores the use of national data sets to undertake comparative cross-country analysis of islands. The paper concentrates on two member states, Greece and Britain, which have large numbers of offshore islands. Data from national population censuses are drawn upon to allow typologies of the islands to be developed. These typologies are utilised to identify similarities and differences between British and Greek islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]