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During the last decades, Nigerian migrant women in the European sex market, described as victims of trafficking, have generated consistent concern and outrage. This article analyzes data from an ethnographic study of more than 800 Nigerian sex workers in southern Spain, describing the networks used by these women to carry out their migration projects and the relationships they establish with their agents. Thus, it contributes to refuting the hegemonic narrative about trafficking and its victims by contrasting it with data collected and systematized over almost a decade of participant observation and informal conversation. This paper argues that the stereotypical image of the Nigerian migrant women as victims of abuse and violence by transnational trafficking networks functions to justify strict migration-control policies and the denial of labor rights to sex workers. As an antidote to the dominance of narratives based on stereotypes and pseudoscientific claims, this paper underscores the urgent need for ethnographic research and its focus on emic (participant) perspectives. The goal is to develop tailored and effective policies and practices for the prevention of and intervention in migrant women's experience of exploitation, abuse, and violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effectiveness of cross-border cooperation programmes between Spain and Portugal, focusing on their impact and outcomes in Portuguese regions. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of the programmes, the study examines the socio-economic dynamics in border regions, including job creation, population trends, and investment patterns. The research employs a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative data analysis. We argue that the cross-border territorial cooperation between Spain and Portugal has played a significant role in fostering regional development and addressing common challenges. While the concerted efforts have shown positive results in terms of economic growth and employment, they have not been sufficient to reverse the regressive demographic trends. Thus, it is essential to strengthen cooperation mechanisms, invest in human capital, and foster innovation so that the two countries can work together to create sustainable and inclusive development across their shared border regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, youth unemployment has been the focus of attention of international and community bodies in the area of social rights. Specifically, there is a need to promote attitudes and skills to access employment, decent work, and entrepreneurship. The measures implemented have not been effective. In 2023, Spain had the highest youth unemployment rate in the European Union (29.6%). An improvement in the level and quality of education and training of young people would reduce their level of unemployment. Entrepreneurship education is, therefore, a necessary value in the society of the 21st century since it is a tool for the development and growth of the younger population. In the entrepreneurship education model proposed in this study for adolescents, we focus on the capacities of self-efficacy and personal initiative as precursors of entrepreneurial behavior. This paper analyzes the differences between the mean values of the variables before and after the implementation of the educational program and the influence or correlation between the variables. The main results are threefold: (i) the educational program implemented improves the mean values of the two variables analyzed; (ii) self-efficacy exerts a positive or direct influence on personal initiative, and (iii) the educational program improves or reinforces the positive influence of self-efficacy on personal initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the logic for using the concept of gender-related violence (GRV) as a broad category that problematises homophobia, transphobia and the policing of gender norms and the gender binary, as well as gender-based violence—understood as primarily violence against women and girls (VAWG). It then evaluates the utility of this concept and its capacity to introduce theoretical refinement to the study of gendered violence, by reviewing its reception within a large international feminist project on gendered violence in the lives of children and young people. The aim of this study was to improve knowledge and understanding of forms of violence and discrimination among practitioners who have everyday contact with general populations of children and young people. It sought to improve their ability to identify and challenge sexist, sexualising, homophobic or transphobic language or behaviour, and their knowledge of how and when to refer children and young people to appropriate support. The paper reports my view of the contribution that the concept of gender-related violence made in each of the four project sites: Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK. The findings are mixed: in Spain and the UK the concept seemed helpful, but in Italy and Ireland it was initially expected to be helpful but, in practice, a conceptualisation closer to gender-based violence plus homophobia was employed. It is tentatively concluded that where LGBTQIA+ rights were well-established as well as the problematisation of VAWG, this framework was successful, but that it was less successful in more heteronormative sites where homophobia was less problematised. It is suggested that, as a concept, GRV can make a valuable intervention in sites like the former. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the analysis of information on environmental catastrophes published in the digital editions of different national and regional newspapers, from a theoretical perspective that situates them as possible amplifiers of the social perception of risk or generators of alarm among the population in situations of risk or catastrophe. Within this framework, the general objective of the research was to find out to what extent the analysed media (a) transmit specialized, accurate, truthful and contrasted information that moves away from the characteristics of sensationalist news; (b) are useful sources of information for the public in the face of the possibility that they may act as generators of confusion and biased perceptions; and (c) show "communication gaps" in their news in relation to two cases of forest fires in Spain: the fires in Galicia in 2017 and those in Gran Canaria in 2019. The results obtained highlight the need for the media to make an effort to transmit truthful and useful communication for citizens in situations of crisis or catastrophe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

About to celebrate its first two decades of life, podcasting is one of the fastest-growing mediums in recent years. This medium, promoted from the amateur sphere as a result of the arrival of Web 2.0, has become an increasingly professional practice thanks to the work of major production companies and platforms such as Spotify. In this context of increasing professionalization, this paper aims to investigate the origins of podcasting in Spain in order to analyze the decisive role that the first community of Spanish amateur podcasters played in its development. An ethnographic research study, focused on the first seven years of the medium in this country (2004–2010), was carried out. The study was based on interviews with the pioneers, a review of source documents, and participant observation. The difficulties and the main milestones related to the medium's origin are analyzed. Likewise, the parallels between the beginning of this practice and the role assumed by radio amateurs at the beginning of radio in Spain a century ago are discussed. This parallel trajectory linking the origin of both media (radio and podcast) can be useful to envision a perspective on the possible developments of podcasting in the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fact that traditional radio is synchronous and unidirectional, with little or no room for interaction and content selection, is one of the main reasons why young people have turned their backs on it. In retrospect, conventional radio never cared for the younger generation, never designing strategies to bring them in. As a result, radio lost its relevance and it does not feature as part of young people's digital diet. Over the last year, the number of podcast consumers has steadily increased, which is causing this format to become more and more cemented in society. It could be a way to gain younger listeners, an opportunity not to be missed by the radio industry. In the past, young people continued to listen to the radio as they got older, but that is no longer the case nor is radio seen as the go-to resource for new musical content. The challenge for radio is clear: regaining its influence through proposals with added value to differentiate itself from global platforms. In order to carry out this research, a total of 410 young university students were surveyed. The results show what the current picture is in such a changing atmosphere. It has been observed that this audience bases their audio consumption on personal preferences, they mainly access it via social media and they would find it useful and interesting to create their own podcast. This paper includes a podcast where academic experts and audio professionals, interviewed for the doctoral thesis "xxx (anonymity for review)", reflect on the strategies that radio should adopt in order to gain young listeners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spain was one of the countries in which more severe lockdown policies were imposed during the second term of 2020 to mitigate the unprecedented health crisis. The measures restricted citizens' mobility, obliging families to stay confined at homes for 99 days since 15 March 2020. The measures created a number of challenges that affect the family climate. This paper aims to empirically analyse how the family climate in Spain has been affected by COVID-19. The family climate assessment was based on an online questionnaire answered by 2034 citizens. A multi-criteria decision-making method rooted in fuzzy logic and TOPSIS, and a fuzzy clustering method, are applied to analyse the effects of the COVID-19 on the family climate. The fuzzy clustering method reveals that there are three different family climate profiles, namely (1) extreme positive, (2) extreme negative, and (3) intermediate. Our results show that some traits affect having a more or less positive family climate. The authors discuss the main contributions and the policy implications that could provide insights into future measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disinformation does not always take the form of a fake news item, it also appears in much less evident formats which are subtly filtered into public opinion, thus making its detection more difficult. A method is proposed in this paper to address the study of "widespread" disinformation by combining social science methods with artificial intelligence and text mining. The case study chosen was the expression "right of self-determination" as a generator of disinformation within the context of the Catalan independence process. The main work hypothesis was that the (intentional or unintentional) confusion around the meaning and scope of this right has become widely extended within the population, generating negative emotions which favour social polarisation. The method utilised had three stages: (1) Description of the disinformation elements surrounding the term with the help of experts; (2) Detection of these elements within a corpus of tweets; (3) Identification of the emotions expressed in the corpus. The results show that the disinformation described by experts clearly dominates the conversation about "self-determination" on Twitter and is associated with a highly negative emotional load in which contempt, hatred, and frustration prevail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the dissemination of fake news and the traditional media outlets' loss of centrality, the credibility of digital news emerges as a key factor for today's democracies. The main goal of this paper was to identify the levels of credibility that Spanish citizens assign to political news in the online environment. A national survey (n = 1669) was designed to assess how the news format affected credibility and likelihood of sharing. Four different news formats were assessed, two of them linked to traditional media (digital newspapers and digital television) and two to social media (Facebook and WhatsApp). Four experimental groups assigned a credibility score and a likelihood of sharing score to four different political news items presented in the aforementioned digital formats. The comparison between the mean credibility scores assigned to the same news item presented in different formats showed significant differences among groups, as did the likelihood of sharing the news. News items shown in a traditional media format, especially digital television, were assigned more credibility than news presented in a social media format, and participants were also more likely to share the former, revealing a more cautious attitude towards social media as a source of news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the role of Catholic religious organizations and worker groups in their commitment to achieve the promotion of decent working conditions. Methodologically, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and the valuation of social anthropology applied to social and political regulations are used. The results show that defending decent work means putting people at the heart of matters and considering work a fundamental right for the dignity of human life. Conclusions show that actions such as guaranteeing workers' rights, extending social protections, and promoting social dialogue are seen as essential in achieving the aim of decent work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young Spanish Black people born to migrant parents continue to be either invisible or problematized in public discourses, which project a monocultural and phenotypically homogeneous Europe. Research in countries with a long immigration history has shown that in the process of othering minorities, gender ideologies emerge as ethnic boundaries and feed the paternalistic treatment of women while accusing their families and communities of harming them through atavistic traditions. However, little research has focused on girls' and young women from West African immigration and Muslim tradition in Spain, a country where they represent the first "second generation". In order to gain a deeper insight into their processes and views, this paper describes and analyses the educational trajectories and transitions to adult life of a group of young women with these backgrounds who participated in a multilevel and narrative ethnography developed in the framework of a longitudinal and comparative project on the risk of Early Leaving of Education and Training in Europe (ELET). In the light of the conceptual contributions of the politics of belonging and intersectionality, the responsibilities regarding the conditions for gaining independence are relocated while assessing the role of the school in the processes of social mobility and the development of egalitarian aspirations in the labor market and in the family environment. The findings show how the limits encountered by these young women in their trajectories to an independent adult life are mainly produced by processes of racialization conditioned by class and gender, ironically in key spaces of social inclusion such as schools and the labor market rather than, or mainly by, an ethnic community that subjugates them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we sought to model and characterize hate speech against immigrants on Twitter in Spain around the appearance of the far-right party Vox. More than 240,000 tweets that included the term 'Vox' between November 2018 and April 2019 were automatically collected and analyzed. Only 1% of the sample included hate speech expressions. Within this subsample of 1977 messages, we found offenses (56%), incitements to hate (42%), and violent speech (2%). The most frequent terms used were classified into five categories: Spain, Immigration, Government, Islam, and Insults. The most common features were foul language, false or doubtful information, irony, distasteful expressions, humiliation or contempt, physical or psychological threats, and incitement to violence. Using unsupervised topic modeling, we found that the four underlying topics (control of illegal immigration, economic assistance for immigrants, consequences of illegal immigration, and Spain as an arrival point for African immigrants and Islamist terrorism) were similar to those in the discourse of Vox. We conclude that the hate speech against immigrants produced around Vox, and not necessarily by Vox, followed the general patterns of this type of speech detected in previous works, including Islamophobia, offensive language more often than violent language, and the refusal to offer public assistance to these collectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]