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The spatial mobility of students and academics as part of the internationalisation of higher education is becoming increasingly relevant in securing top-tier positions, especially within academia. While the number of doctoral candidates is rising, new positions are not created at the same rate, leading to scarcer career opportunities in academia and the need to develop alternative career paths. Previous studies have much focused on the connection between mobility and career development among junior academics in the STEM fields, but the significance of mobility for SSH PhD candidates and their career development remains unanswered. Does spatial mobility have any effects there, and if so, which? For this reason, this paper studied doctoral SSH candidates from Germany with mobility experiences in the Netherlands. The findings show that spatial mobility affects the perception of the PhD candidate's career in several, sometimes ambivalent ways. It shows that the experience of mobility narrows the planning to a career in academia, contributes to the informal learning process of the candidate, and expands the horizon for possible opportunities in academia. The perceived asset of mobility varies alongside the internationalisation of disciplines and whether the candidate plans to return to Germany or pursue an international career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: There is a growing consensus worldwide that palliative care needs to be both more inclusive of conditions other than cancer and to improve. This paper explores some common challenges currently faced by professionals providing palliative care for patients with either cancer or dementia across five countries. Method: One focus group (n = 7) and 67 interviews were conducted in 2012 across five countries: England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway, with professionals from dementia, cancer and palliative care settings. Results: The interviews revealed five common challenges faced across the five countries: communication difficulties (between services; and between professionals, and patients and their families); the variable extent of structural/functional integration of services; the difficulties in funding of palliative care services; problematic processes of care (boundaries, definitions, knowledge, skills and inclusiveness) and, finally, time constraints. Conclusion: These are not problems distinct to palliative care, but they may have different origins and explanations compared to other areas of health care. This paper explored deeper themes hidden behind a discourse about barriers and facilitators to improving care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many international differences can be experienced in shopping spaces on both sides of a national border. Other languages, unfamiliar goods and unknown spatial codes are only a few of the physical-functional and socio-cultural differences that could cause exciting and stimulating situations but could also be perceived as problematic and deterring. This paper analyses perceptions, motivations and practices of cross-border (non-)shoppers and provides insights into ways in which people from cross-border regions deal with differences and the extent to which they interact across borders. The aim is to both theoretically and empirically substantiate the dynamic concept of (un)familiarity by scrutinizing the impact of “push”, “pull”, “keep” and “repel” factors on shopping (im)mobility in the Dutch-German Rhine-Waal Euroregion. These factors are seen as rooted in dynamic processes of constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing differences between places on both sides of the border. In so doing, attention is paid to changing shopping practices and motivations and influencing changing perceptions of international differences. As such, the paper also discusses “familiarization processes” in cross-border regions. The concluding section provides critical reflections on the current European policy approach towards cross-border regional development. In fact, the paper ends with a plea for more instead of less borders, as borders are markers of international differences which could promote cross-border mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses feelings of socio-cultural proximity and distance with a specific focus on the tourist experience in cross-border shopping and everyday life practices in border regions. We examined shopping practices of Dutch border crossers who visit the German town Kleve in the Dutch–German border region. This particular border context has allowed us not only to reflect on a multidimensional approach towards socio-cultural proximity and distance, but also to examine how these different dimensions express themselves in the tourist experience when it comes to people and places that are geographically ‘close’ but assumingly socially and culturally ‘distant’ from home. Although some differences prompted feelings of discomfort, in particular, differences in social engagement, feelings of comfort stand out in our analysis of cross-border shopping tourism. Furthermore, our study shows that shopping tourism and exoticism, on the one hand, and everyday routines and the mundane, on the other hand, are closely intertwined in the lives of people living in a border region, resulting in a fluid interpretation of the exotic and the mundane in the cross-border context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the experience of households in two adjacent countries, Germany and the Netherlands, both of which have relatively modest levels of home ownership but significantly different housing systems. Population growth is slowing down in Germany, while it is still increasing in the Netherlands. German house prices are stable while Dutch prices have been rising considerably for 25 years now. The central question is whether people in these two different contexts, which are both faced with globalization and social security reforms, have similar perceptions of the securities and insecurities of home ownership. The paper is based on institutional studies and 20 interviews among home owners and ten interviews among tenants in both countries. The central issues here are the perceptions of (in)security and equity. The paper concludes that in both countries home ownership is perceived as a nest-egg and a 'pension in stone'. However, it is also associated with insecurity. In Germany many households saw house prices as a source of insecurity. This can be explained by strong fluctuations in house prices in Germany and the fear that the declining population might adversely affect the situation and hence the 'pension in stone'. In the Netherlands a policy change - particularly a change in tax relief for mortgage-holders - was the main worry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been a feature of the past 30 years or so that individual sovereign states have been increasingly willing to partially set aside their own interests in favour of international treaties on pollution control and wildlife protection. It is the political will of the government signatories to such agreements that is the key to successful implementation as that political will provides the legitimate enforceable authority that is necessary to ensure compliance. This paper examines a trilateral agreement made by the Governments of Denmark, Germany and Holland for the protection and management of the Wadden Sea—one of Europe's most important wildlife sites. The examination of that agreement explores the key mechanisms used for its implementation and, in the case of the Wadden Sea, those mechanisms include the operation of key European Union environmental Directives. The paper finds major differences in approach and application of the Birds, Habitats and Environmental Impact Assessment Directives across the Wadden Sea region and argues that these differences undermine the trilateral agreements made by the three governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making and applying the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) is an example of `Europeanization'. Europeanization is the outcome of the interaction between actors with various motivations. in the case of the ESDP process, these motivations reflect the spatial planning traditions and the institutional set-ups of the relevant actors. As a preliminary, the paper describes the ESDP. It then analyses the motivations, reflecting as they do their spatial planning traditions and institutional set-ups, of four key actors without whom the ESDP would not have been what it is: France, the Netherlands, Germany and the European Commission. The paper ends with a discussion of the prospects of European spatial planning after enlargement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to provide information on the institutional development of the water supply and sanitation (WSS) sector in Yemen, its achievements, challenges and constraints. In 1997 the government of Yemen approved its water supply and sanitation reform agenda in the form of a Council of Ministers decree and since then the implementation of the reform agenda has started with technical and financial assistance from Germany, the Netherlands, the World Bank and other donors in addition to the contribution from the government of Yemen. The main principles of the reform agenda are these: the separation of the executive from the regulatory functions; decentralization of service provision and corporatization through the establishment of autonomous WSS corporations; the establishment of a regulatory agency; capacity building and human resources development; and public-private partnership (PPP). This paper gives a summary of what has been achieved in the implementation of the reform agenda in general and concentrates on the pilot case of the first PPP initiative in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen. The paper takes us through the stages of PPP option study right through to the preparation of the request for proposals, which was completed in August 2002. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much did national competition policies converge between 1950 and 2000, and what were the forces behind this? These are the questions the paper attempts to answer, for three countries whose competition policies differed substantially at the outset: Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. The paper measures the degree of convergence of national competition policies, and concludes that there has been convergence towards the stricter EU anti-trust norms. This can be explained by neither negative ('the market') nor positive ('the state') integration, as competition policy is one of the few policy areas where the EU has never explicitly tried to harmonize national legislation. Other forces must have been at work. We investigate the role of various actors, which each play a role in three theories of European integration: institutionalism, which stresses the importance of the central European institutions; neofunctionalism, which focuses on international business; and the epistemic community approach, which highlights the importance of transnational expert communities. We find that convergence has been mainly the work of subtle 'topdown' pressure from the CEC and the ECJ ('the courts'), combined with the emergence of an epistemic 'community' of legally trained officials, which has been a channel for the exchange of information, ideas, solutions and arguments between the systems and levels of law. EU case law provided an important model, experiment and source of norms for this community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews a key dynamic in post-medieval archaeology, that is, the relationship between artefacts and images, and in particular the questions raised in the study of historic domestic material culture depicted in contemporaneous painting and prints. Both media underwent a major transformation from c. 1400. Two main groups of pictorial art containing domestic material culture are reviewed, namely pre- and post-Reformation art in the Netherlands and Germany and genre paintings of the Dutch Golden Age. The historical iconographic record may shed a potentially rich qualitative light onto the quantitative archaeological patterning. Excavations at Duisburg in the Lower Rhineland are selected as a rich source of archaeological correspondence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solidarity is widely described as one of the leading principles for the public provision of health care in Western Europe and is therefore prominently discussed in debates on the introduction of genetic technologies in national health care provision arrangements. However, solidarity is often defined in an essentialist and quantitative way, which does very little to show the complexities of and changes in health care allocation. In this paper we therefore propose to analyze solidarity as a value that is reproduced in practices of providing health care. This means that we analyzed how three particular genetic technologies are incorporated in basic health care provision in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and how individuals or groups at risk get access to them. On the basis of a characterization of the distributive mechanisms in these three countries, we argue for a discussion on genetics and solidarity that pays attention to the complexity and specificity of practices in the analysis and politics of solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the levels of socio-cultural integration of naturalised and non-naturalised immigrants in the Netherlands, France and Germany. Socio-cultural integration is measured by host-country identification, proficiency and use of the host-country language, and interethnic social contacts. To increase cross-national comparability, we focus on immigrants from two rural regions in Turkey who migrated before 1975. Based on the assumption that easily accessible citizenship promotes socio-cultural integration, we test two hypotheses. First, whether naturalised immigrants display higher levels of socio-cultural integration than non-naturalised immigrants. Second, whether immigrants in countries with few preconditions for naturalisation show higher levels of socio-cultural integration. We find that naturalisation is positively associated with socio-cultural integration only in those countries—France and Germany—that have traditionally required a certain degree of cultural assimilation from their new citizens. Regarding country differences, we find that Turkish immigrants in France show higher levels of socio-cultural integration on all four indicators. For host-country identification, they share this position with Dutch Turks. The results show that limited cultural assimilation conditions tied to citizenship may be helpful in promoting socio-cultural integration, but also that the allowance of dual nationality does not have the negative effects that are sometimes ascribed to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that track mobility during secondary education is influenced by parental background. However, family background effects might vary due to institutional variations in the educational structure. Therefore, in our paper we compare social selectivity of track mobility in two countries, Germany and The Netherlands. Both countries offer a hierarchically tracked educational system, but differ in details. Further, both countries established educational reforms in the late sixties, changing the conditions for track mobility differently. In our empirical analyses using data from the Family Survey Dutch Population and the German Life History Study we find that changing to a higher track is more likely for students who face the threat of status demotion, whereas changing to a lower track is independent of status maintenance motives. Intra-secondary transitions occur less often in The Netherlands than in Germany and are less motivated by status maintenance. Educational legislation reduces the effects of relative education of the parents only on upward mobility in Germany and only on downward mobility in The Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will set out the concept of a 'gap' between the social rented and market rented housing sector. This will be examined with respect to one aspect of competition between the two sectors in England, France, the Netherlands and Germany: substitutability. The analysis will involve an examination of the extent to which tenants can choose between the two sectors. The price-quality bundles of housing services as expressed by the characteristics of the accommodation, the property rights of the tenants, the allocation system and the housing allowances in the different countries will be compared. Competition measured in this way seems to be rather larger than smaller in the Netherlands and Germany and rather small in England. France's intermediate sector partly closes the gap between both rental tenures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the historical socio-political innovation journeys of onshore wind power in North Rhine-Westphalia and the Netherlands, concentrating on the implementation (realisation) of wind energy projects and the market of project development. Attention is drawn to the level of implementation (where struggles between multiple interests and meanings become manifest) and to the ability of entrepreneurs to succesfully plan and develop projects. A historical new-institutionalist approach is adopted, in which actors, networks and their institutional environment are understood as mutually constitutive. We investigate how socio-political embedding has come about - the process through, which a new technology becomes embedded in existing and changing rules and routines of society. A conclusion is that socio-political embedding is crucial to the implementation achievements and market developments. The legitimacy of wind projects is not self-evident. Addressing socio-political embedding contributes to a better understanding of the development of this legitimacy. Not only researchers but also policy makers should address legitimacy as a central issue, not just an afterthought to the development and diffusion of new technologies. A policy and planning strategy that involves the institutionalisation of early participation of relevant stakeholders can enhance the legitimacy of both the process and outcome and contribute to social-political innovation needed to accomplish sustainable innovation journeys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article enquires about why some countries have specialised their further education provision more than others, focusing on three types of specialisation: by subject, by geographical area and by age group. The article proposes an analytical framework to understand the drivers for further education provider specialisation, based on four variables: inputs to the further education system, regulatory framework, demand and supporting clusters. It then applies this framework to review the experience of Germany, New Zealand and the Netherlands in recent years. Drawing on this review, the last section of the paper provides some lessons for England and issues for further debate. It is concluded that the model proposed helps to explain the evolution of provider specialisation in the countries covered and that the UK's current specialisation profile suggests that greater efforts should be made to increase geographical specialisation, whereas action in stimulating further specialisation by subject and age group should be subject to caveats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the power of opposition parliamentary party groups when scrutinising their governments' decision-making concerning European Union issues, an important component in assuring democracy within the emerging multi-level system of governance in the EU. It first sets out the advantages that this provides to the political system, including improving government performance, improved democratic legitimacy, the channelling of disagreement and conflict into parliament, and preparing the opposition to govern. The article then proposes a set of criteria for measuring such power, which focus on the legal framework, institutional structures, and strategic behaviours, which give power to opposition parties when conducting scrutiny. Finally, the article considers these variables in four EU member states to evaluate empirically the power of opposition parties to scrutinise their government's EU decision-making. Because the power of scrutiny over EU matters must be seen in the context of the overall relationship of executive–legislative relations in a country, the four countries have been chosen to represent a country with a majority government (UK), two coalition governments (Germany and the Netherlands), and a minority government (Denmark). This analysis shows that opposition parties in parliaments with minority governments have the greatest power to scrutinise their government, followed by parliaments with coalition governments. Opposition parties in parliaments with majority governments have the least power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that research assessment is of increasing importance as an instrument of New Public Management and within the context of efforts to establish a European Research Area. Specifically, it compares the procedures of research assessment in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany in an attempt to distil basic design options for such procedures. It is suggested that this general model may be utilised to assist reviews of currently practised procedures and for the development of new ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses an overlooked perspective in the literature and practice of online journalism education: an explicit connection in educational approaches and handbooks between scholarly work on online journalists, and conceptual publications regarding the change role of professional journalism online. The authors come to this issue from the perspectives of research and educational practices in their respective countries: Flanders, Germany and The Netherlands. By coupling the results from surveys among online journalists in these countries with emerging approaches in online newsrooms as well as online journalism education programs, the authors find that most educational programs do not embrace an innovative role regarding online journalism, and generally tend to focus on a strictly vocational and technological approach in teaching. While online journalists seem to be facing particular challenges regarding new roles, relationships with audiences and journalists from "offline" media, and ethical dilemmas, education seems to be geared towards using new media on top of existing practices. The authors argue that a more conceptually rigorous approach towards teaching online or even multimedia journalism is called for on the basis of both empirical and theoretical work on journalism and new media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]